Iceland and Europe Atlantic Coast

All of a sudden Iceland is hot. Of course, it may be that we tend to follow adventurous people on social media, but it suddenly seemed like everyone was either there or planning on going there. We certainly didn't want to be left out, so we messaged some traveling family friends and pitched the idea of having them join us in camper vans to drive around the Ring Road for a couple weeks. Before long, we had a group of six parents and six kids booked on flights.

I've often said that the hardest part of doing something adventurous is taking the first step. Once we'd taken that one (and brought a few people with us!), we figured we'd be most of the way to mainland Europe and may as well continue on. A plan developed to fly 3 1/2 hours from Reykjavik to Amsterdam and then rent a camper ("camping car," as we'd come to find out they are called over there) and drive down the Atlantic Coast of Europe hitting the historic beaches of Normandy, an inland adventure to Paris and whatever else we could find on the way down to the dramatic beaches of southern Portugal (the *other* hot spot it seems like everyone is visiting!).

I'll start the recap with a few posts from the trip prep including overthinking bags and rental vehicles, continue with adventures with amazing road friends and their families in magical Iceland and take you through the ups and downs of our scurry (don't think about bed bugs, don't think about bed bugs) south to Portugal. Ironically, the posts end with some ambivalence the relationship between blogs and social media, something this little intro and the following consolidation of social media posts is meant to address!