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(Actually, this first section before we arrive in Iceland was Friday, June 18...) And we're off! We did most of the packing last night, after going to see "Phantom Menace" so we could talk with Brian about it. Our neighbor Carol agreed to drive us to the airport, and she showed up promptly at noon, we piled into the Ranger and headed for the airport.
When we checked in we made the mistake of asking for emergency exit seating (so David and Brian could have the extra leg-room), and the Northwest counter agent gladly set us up with it for our flight to Reykjavik. This was a mistake because the Iceland Air agent in Minniapolis felt his territory was being invaded and bumped Paige and David to the very last row of the plane when he discovered the audacity of the Northwest agent in Albuquerque. That was a bummer, but we survived.
We had a little time after checking our luggage to record the start of our trip from the Albuquerque airport. After we took this picture of Paige and saw that it didn't come out very well, we went around to the sunny side of the statue to take a picture of David...
Which turned out slightly better. Note the helmet bag, we decided not to trust our helmets to the baggage handlers.
We met up with Brian in Minneapolis, learned of our seat re-arrangement, and flew off to Reykjavik. David managed to get a little sleep, but Paige and Brian stayed up the whole night. This picture was taken after we boarded our flight from Reykjavik to Frankfurt... the shadowy figure in the foreground is Brian.
I handed the camera over to Brian to snap a better picture of the weather outside during our brief stay in Iceland. Thankfully, this flight to Frankfurt was not very full, and we moved around a bit so that we each had a window or an isle. When breakfast was served Paige and David were finally allowed to eat a big meal, as we'd been fasting as part of the Argonne National Laboratories Anti-Jet-Lag Diet. The meals on Iceland air were all interesting: I think all the dinners had Salmon in at least one form. For breakfast we had ham slices wrapped in what my family calls "Swedish Pancakes" or "Platar Pancakes".
The flight from Reykjavik was fairly short, so it wasn't long before we arrived in Frankfurt, ready to brave immigration and customs. As it turned out, our trips through these official stations were basically non-events. Especially customs, where we never even spoke to anyone except in the USA when we re-entered the country and Paige still had a bannana she bought in Iceland, so she had to talk to the agriculture people.
After sailing through customs and immigration we headed up to the AVIS counter and got the keys to our rental car. We deposited our luggage in the car: figuring out how to squeeze our stuff into the trunk plus the one open back seat. Brian and David were the only drivers we arranged (I think Paige was feeling fairly sleepy by that time.) At that point we decided we were hungry, and instead of braving Frankfurt we decided to head back into the airport, and ended up coping out and eating lunch at McDonald's.
Our stomachs full, we headed back to the car. Brian (having the only European driving experience among us) got us out and onto the Autobahn headed south. After a bit of acclimation to the car and the Autobahn, he cranked it up to 150 KPH (and eventually 160KPH, which is 100 MPH) and we cruised! Of course, we were still being passed at incredible speeds by BMWs, Porches and Mercedes going MUCH faster.
After about an hour Brian declared that he was "starting to halucinate" and could someone else please drive? David gladly took over the wheel, as he felt really pretty well (could the anti-jet-lag diet really have worked?) and drove the remainder of the trip to Munich. It was a little over 4 hours of driving, and cost us $95 for the car and $35 for gasoline total, as opposed to the train which would have cost $100 each, so economically the car was a definite win. HOWEVER: Paige and Brian were not in shape to make the drive, so it was a good thing David got some sleep on the plane!
We arrived in Olching (the location the tour starts from near Munich) around 7:10pm, just in time to catch the rest of the group before they went off to have dinner at a local resturant. So we left our stuff in the car and hopped into the luggage van (Myrtle) with the other tour members who were there already. Dinner was our first introduction to Bavarian food... can you say MEAT!!? Big slabs of meat! Actually, before the meat came our introduction to European salads, which we loved. They tend to put small servings of three different salads (a potato salad, a carrot sallad, and a cucumber salad, for example) under a pile of lettuce and dressing. We really liked these salads, and got them with many of our meals! Back to the meat... David ordered the Ente (Duck) which was a great choice and very delicious while Paige ordered the Schweine Schnitzel and wasn't too sure about all that deep-fried meat.
After dinner we had some of the local fire-water (schnappes), then trundled back to the hotel and *crashed*.
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