Day 12: Iceland and Coming Home

We left Weiden for Munich on Monday afternoon.  The bus ride was about 2.5 hours.  Once we reached Munich, we checked into our hotel and walked around the town nearby to find a Bavarian Restaurant - our last German meal before heading back to the States.  

Zach and Sierra try to decipher the handwritten menu at our Bavarian restaurant.  Thankfully, the waiter translated it into English for us.  

We woke up at 330 to start our journey home.  We landed in Iceland at 9 am and had the rest of the afternoon to take a tour of the capital city (Reykjavik) and visit the famous Blue Lagoon Spa.   The landscape of Iceland is absolutely beautiful.  Much of the land we traveled through were"lava fields", having been formed from volcano lava and ash thousands of years ago.  The weather in Iceland felt freezing with wind and rain. Once we took a swim in the Blue Lagoon, we were thankful that the weather was so cold.  Otherwise the hot water spring would've felt too warm.  

Part of the group in the Munich apartment, shortly before departure.

Iceland!!

lava fields - as viewed from our bus tour

group photo in front of Icelandic statues

approaching the Blue Lagoon Spa

Jake and Zach hurry into the building and out of the cold and rain. 

Tori and Jake in front of some of the hot springs.  

We hopped back on a plane to DC at about 430 and arrived around 7 pm  EST.  Our bus driver had no problem finding our little group and we made it back to Knoch High School at about 1 am.  Even though we all had a great time in Germany, everyone was happy to finally make it back home after our long day of traveling and touring Iceland.

The exhausted group fills out their immigration forms before going through customs. 

One last group photo in DC before we  headed onto the bus - the last leg of the journey.

Welcome Home!!   After traveling for 27 hours, the group finally arrived back at Knoch High School, where the families were waiting to meet us.