Like I mentioned, it truly was a absurdly expensive vacation.

But sometimes, spending all that money is worth it. I don’t think I’d realized how much I’d needed a trip with a girlfriend until I took one.

The photos you’re seeing here are of a bus tour Francine and I went on of the “Golden Circle.” It was not very golden on the day we did it. The rain was pouring down, the winds were so strong walking outside was basically doing the Michael Jackson anti-gravity lean.

I am so happy that I bit the bullet and bought a coat in London on the first day I was there, and took it with me to Iceland. It was a lifesaver. I am not so happy that I left it on the plane on the way back. That’s the second coat I’ve left on a plane in the past month and a half!

I was wearing every article of long sleeve clothing that I brought with me on the trip (which is, in essence, pretty much every article of long sleeve clothing I own). I generally travel to avoid winter and keep myself wardrobed in short dresses and sandals.

This year, as you can see, I really messed that whole chasing-the-eternal-summer dream up! With time spent in Michigan (while there was still snow on the ground), Vancouver, Edinburgh, London and Reykjavik, I ended up trading Chilean winter for winter. More exotic winters, but winter nonetheless.

I never thought I’d say I loved being on a tour bus buuuuut in this case, every time we got back on I didn’t want to disembark ever again. I like being warm and dry more than I like waiting to watch geysers to explode.

If the day had been brighter, I might have had more of a chance to be impressed by the scenery. As it stands, the tour was worth it to me for one reason and one reason alone…the chance to sit next to Francine and giggle and cry and laugh so loud the rest of the bus probably hated us, and talk about every topic under the sun for 8 hours straight.

My other favorite take-aways from the tour were meeting somebody in a TOP SECRET profession whose cover I cannot blow and founding out that the geyser was invented in Iceland.

Haha. You know what I mean. Well, maybe you don’t. The first geyser ever in printed source and known to Europeans was a “geysir” in Iceland. File that one away under absolutely useless facts I’ll probably remember forever.

At the end of the day Francine and I were both looking a little worse for the wear, but we weren’t too tired to meet up with a new friend and head out for a runtur until 5am. “Runtur” is Icelandic for bar hopping which is Iceland for it-never-gets-dark-so-we’ll-stay-out-drinking-until-we-can’t-stand-up-anymore. A fact-book on the country tells me that alcoholism is a big problem there.

There’s a little app making it’s way around the internets called 1 Second Every Day. I think in about a year when all the people who are discovering it now are posting their full year worth of one seconds, you’ll start hearing more about it.

The premise is that you record a snippet of your life every day and of that choose one second and the app puts them all together in a little movie for you. This is mine from May 25-June 16th (I forgot to record something 4 different days – sadly, none of my London time!). But you’ll see — I start at the Edinburgh half marathon, go to Iceland, Las Vegas, and Miami in these 20 seconds.

I like the concept so much. One second is enough to remind of you what you were doing on a particular day or who you were laughing with at that moment. I’m going to try and stick with this for at least a year but I’ll post periodic updates on here if you’re interested.

I find it fascinating to see three weeks condensed down into such a short clip. I’m generally not a video person. I always find them too long, too slow moving. 1 second a day is about all my attention span has time for, so this is perfectly consumable for me.

Are any of you using 1 Second Every Day? And if so have you uploaded any videos?

I can’t…

No words.

This wedding seriously left me at a loss for words.

No, wait, that’s a LIE. When am I ever at a loss for words?! Let’s tell it like it is — if you’re going to get married, this is HOW YOU GET MARRIED. With an epic throw down in Las Vegas. Boom. The end.

And speaking of epic, let’s talk about Jamie and Houssem for a minute. She’s from L.A., he’s from Tunisia, they met in Paris, RANDOMLY when he approached her, one beautiful blond girl out of literally thousands of tourists out front of the Notre Dame. HOW CRAZY IS THAT?!

For their wedding day, Jamie had one thing clear — no stress, she was marrying her love. That’s all that mattered. The flowers came and they weren’t at all what she had ordered and she looked at them and laughed and said, “I don’t care! I’m marrying my love!!!”

Their attitude was infectious. There’s no way in hell you could’ve been at that wedding and not had a good time. If the Grinch Who Stole Christmas was there he would’ve been out on the dance floor boogeying with Grandma, that’s just the way it was.

And I should mention, Jamie is the RIDICULOUSLY talented designer who did my website! I’ve kind of been madly in love with her ever since we met in Paris a few years ago. Spending time with her on the wedding day only reinforced that. She’s a larger than life personality, one of those people who says they’re going to do something insane, like, “I’m going to start a comedy show and it will be a hit in the U.S. all the way to Tunisia, all the way to the Amazon, all the way to the Great Wall of China,” and you wouldn’t believe it with anybody else but in her case you’re just like, yeaaaaah, that will probably actually happen because this girl is crazy. Crazy in the best way possible.

Houssem, handsome devil!

I love this shot!

Jamie’s dad’s face when he saw his daughter was priceless! And I love the reaction of the two strangers in the background, one is looking at him and the other at Jamie and they’re both awww-ing their hearts out!

Bridesmaid Kelly: “Kyle, why are you in here? Are you going to take pictures of us in the bathroom?”

Me: “Actuaaaaally….”

It’s not a party until a bridesmaid hits the floor.

Love. Love. LOVE.

Francine and I traveled there for a little mini vacation at the beginning of this month!

Even though I read in an article on the plane, on WOW airlines, that Iceland had just been named as the friendliest country in the world for tourists, I didn’t find it’s inhabitants particularly kind.

They weren’t mean, per say, maybe just a bit gruff, a tiny bit resentful of tourists’ presence on their island. “Ok, fine, FINE. You can come here and spend your money in our ruinously expensive country and save our economy — but we don’t have to like it.”

You know, if I were them, maybe I wouldn’t want to share the beauty either. Maybe I’d want to keep it to myself and leave it completely untainted.

They were all alone out there in the middle of the Atlantic/Norwegian Sea, for so many years.

And then some genius, probably a politician, got the bright idea to add a free stopover on Icelandic Air from the U.S. en route to Europe. And all of a sudden their privacy was invaded by hoards of tourists, seeking out a nature hit in it’s purest form — volcanos and geysers and waterfalls, oh my!

The areas outside of the city are gorgeous, sort of like the South of Chile but geographically milder.

The country is tiny. TINY. The entire nation has a population smaller than most neighborhoods in Santiago — 320,000 or around there, I believe.

Reykjavik is a small, fairly unattractive city, architecturally speaking — built for strong winds and brutal rains and snow, they chose practicality over design.

Though it does have vibrant life and arts and design and the interiors of so many places we visited were beautiful, bright spaces.

More on Iceland coming soon! What a killer trip!!! We managed to get left behind by our tour bus in the pouring rain out somewhere in the Icelandic wilderness and also missed a flight. Adventures all around I’ll talk about all the rest of it in a few more blog posts about this crazy place!