Monday August 25, Flying to Keflavík
This is the first of about 25 posts documenting our recent trip to Iceland where we toured much of the country in a clockwise fashion over three weeks. After six months of planning and preparation for our vacation commencing on Monday August 25, Sunday the 24th arrived in a hurry. It amazes me how fast those six months went by. At first, especially in the lengthy planning phase, the trip seemed forever in the future, but by August, the days ticked off in a dizzying rush. Suddenly, the trip was upon us and the airline was asking us to check in for our flights. Sunday evening, Ann and I packed one small suitcase each and checked in for our flights on Monday, all that planning a distant memory.
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| Sunset in Reykjavík; Hallgrímskirkja Lit Up |
I lay awake much of the night, my brain fully engaged running through trip details as if I had not already sweated them for months. Monday morning, we awoke to a gray day and the unexpected sounds of raindrops on the skylight, good news for the firefighters battling the forest fire just north of us. And good to wash away the film of ash that has been dropping like snowflakes. Rain in late August in the high desert: who would have thought? Best to get used to it: Iceland is a rainy place.
After our ritualistic morning coffee, a final pot of American drip coffee before heading off to face coffee uncertainty, I gave the kitchen a thorough deep cleaning. There is little worse than coming home to a messy kitchen and little better than coming home to a sparkling kitchen. Our kitchen is often tidy but not sparkling, used heavily every day as it is. This was a deep clean reminiscent of readying the restaurant kitchen for our week of annual closure. And busy hands kept me from sweating more details as if I could change anything at this late date.
The airport shuttle pickup arrived a few minutes before the scheduled time of 12:15. At our tiny airport, the lines for security were longer than I have ever seen—last minute trips before school starts?—but still, we were through in about 10 minutes. In the waiting area, we could see no plane and the cabin crew was standing around, business as usual when flying Alaska, a hot mess among airlines, but our only real option. Fortunately, the plane arrived shortly after we took a seat, but this has not always been our experience. All in all, the delay was not too bad, about 20 minutes. We learned long ago to schedule lengthy layovers in Seattle; delays on Alaska are routine.
The cabin of the Alaska 737 was smoking hot, almost unbearably so until we pushed back from the gate, finally off shore power so that the AC kicked in. The northbound trip to SEA was 42 minutes in the air, compared to the southbound trip of about 37 minutes on average. At SEA, planes were holding short all down the airport to cross the active runway. Despite the hold, we arrived only 15 minutes late. Purposefully, we had built plenty of slack into our schedule which is good because we had to transfer from N (north) terminal to S (south) terminal, the worst possible transfer involving catching three trams.
Because Iceland Air does not serve food on flights, we stopped for some at the only bar/restaurant in the small terminal. Getting service at the bar was a trial because none of the employees actually cared, a pitiful display of people in the service industry who do not deserve to be there. Our beers were more foam than beer and nobody cared if we were happy or even walked out. A bright spot was meeting a Kenyan guy traveling with his family to Tokyo for holiday. He regaled us with stories of Masai Mara.
Giving up on ever getting served, we walked out and ordered food from a take-away counter nearby and ate our crappy food in the gate waiting area. There, we met a family from Calgary returning home from exploring Seattle and had a brief discussion of transborder life in the Trump era. Boarding for our flight was 40 minutes late, but we got loaded quickly and pushback was only 17 minutes late, 17 minutes that we would make up in the 7.5-hour flight.
Although Iceland Air has a reputation for being extremely stingy in letting customers bring on carry-on luggage, it was not a problem for us. This is perhaps because we were boarding a brand new A321 with lots of overhead space and more likely because the flight was about half full, unlike the return flight which had no free seats.
The back of each seat on this new A321 has a new-fangled and new-to-me entertainment center. This system caused two problems, one for me and a bigger one for the cabin crew. I thought ahead to bring my traditional USB cable to power my phone during the flight. Unfortunately, this new plane has no traditional ports, merely a tiny USB-C port tucked away on the bottom edge of the screen on the seat ahead of me. I arrived in Iceland with a sorely depleted battery.
Furthermore, the new entertainment center has buttons at the bottom edge, one of which looks like a brightness control but which powers the overhead reading light. Worse, many customers mistakenly pushed another button which proved to be the cabin crew call button. Until people figured it out, the cabin crew were going from seat to seat answering mistaken calls. Airbus should win a prize for terrible user interface design.
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| New Airbus Entertainment Center Caused Problems |
Tuesday August 26, Keflavík to Reykjavík
Flying on one day and arriving on the next is another surreal experience, all part and parcel of flying to Europe from the U.S. West Coast. We left at 1900 on Monday the 25th and arrived at 0930 on Tuesday the 26th after a flight of 7.5 hours. Our flight made up all the departure delay to arrive on schedule under cloudy skies with intermittent showers and a squall or two visible in the distance. The gloomy dreary sky was a sample of what was to come on our trip. It rained on 19 of 21 days, though with the exception of about four days, the rain was of the light, misty Willamette Valley kind that we are used to.
Ordinarily, we do not plan anything the day of arrival in Europe knowing that we will be beat from the overnight travel. Jetlag is real. However, arriving at 9:30 in the morning in Keflavík, even after picking up the rental car and hitting a store for groceries, we would still have many hours to kill before we could check into our B&B in Reykjavík, about 45 minutes from the airport.
To kill time, I planned for a leisurely trip around the Reykjanes peninsula before driving into downtown and finding our room. Back in Oregon, I had thought that we might aim for the Grindavík area to see the newly erupting lava, walk about the Seltún Geothermal Area, and visit Lake Kleifarvatn on the way into town.
After deplaning, the first order of business was to find the shuttle to the rental car office, but the map to the shuttle meeting point did not seem to match the layout of the airport. After passing through Passport Control, we ended up in the departures hall trying to find our way out. I do not mind saying that as tired and cranky as I was, I was about on the verge of a meltdown. A worker fitting out a new store took pity on us and quasi-directed us in the basic direction of baggage claim and the customs hall. We are used to SEA where Passport Control and Customs are a one-stop shop.
Now headed in the correct direction by following the "Exit to Iceland" signs, we passed through the baggage claim (they call it "reclaim," but whatever) and found ourselves in the middle of the duty free store. This was a good thing because we planned to buy wine for our at-home dinners at the more reasonable duty-free rate rather than at the exorbitant rates at the state-run liquor stores, the Vínbúðin stores of limited operating hours and even more limited inventory. Note to readers: the selection at the duty-free is the best you will find in all of Iceland.
Duty-free checkout is self-service and I am not sure that anyone was paying any attention to us and what we rang up, whether we stayed within the duty-free limits, or not. Operations were even slacker as we walked by customs, no officers in sight, with a case box of wine.
Following signs and escalators, we emerged into the airport terminal proper and it was well signposted for the shuttle meeting area. On arrival at the meeting point, we were to request a shuttle via the web, but there was no need. A Polish shuttle driver was waiting on us and a couple from Taiwan. The limited English of the Polish driver and the essentially non-existent English of the Taiwanese was something of a disaster.
The Taiwanese couple, clad in brand new name brand outdoor gear, could not understand the driver's instruction on where to load their gigantic bags into the van. Each of their bags was larger than our two small suitcases and our two small carry-on bags. The struggles for this couple would get worse at the rental car center, where even with the help of a translator app, communicating was tough.
Our check-in for the rental car had already been handled on the internet before we arrived, so our time at the desk was quick and limited to their giving me our mobile WiFi unit, more on which later, and a cigarette lighter power adapter for it. A rental car company employee delivered our car to the waiting room while we sat.
When we went outside, it was, surprise, surprise, a white Dacia Duster, the cliché of clichés, the one vehicle that clearly advertises that the driver is a tourist. The car is so common that ours would be one of many in a parking lot forcing us to play the which-white-Duster-is-ours game repeatedly. In fact, Ann once opened the door of the wrong Duster and to everyone’s surprise, found it occupied. We all had a good laugh. The Renault-designed car built in Romania signals to Icelanders to expect chaos and unpredictable driving. My own experience backs this up; many Dusters had horrible drivers.
I almost melted down earlier. Now is the point where I really melted down. The first order of business after connecting to the mobile WiFi was to enter my credit card and license plate number into the Parka app to simplify paying for parking. In central Reykjavík and at major tourist attractions (even some minor ones in the middle of nowhere), parking is not free. Many have license plate readers which will automatically charge your credit card on entry for daily parking or on exit for hourly parking, if your license plate number and credit card are registered.
I had one hell of a time trying to enter the credit card information because my bank decided it needed to use two-factor authentication to ensure it was me. In trying to verify the card number, my provider sent me a validation code via SMS. Naturally, I was in airplane mode using a portable Wi-Fi hotspot and the SMS messages went undelivered.
Unable to find a workaround such as an authentication code via email, I was going apoplectic. This is not my usual demeanor, but throw exhaustion into the mix and kaboom! Not my finest hour. Finally, I turned off airplane mode and connected to the nearest cell tower to receive the messages at whatever exorbitant data rate that Verizon is going to charge me for international roaming data. I have not yet seen the bill as of this writing.
While I was messing with this and steaming up the interior of the car, Ann was busy entering a route into Maps for our stops, starting with a grocery store. We used Apple Maps exclusively and it worked well. We also had Google Maps and Waze for backup, but never had to use them. However, an issue would soon surface.
Ann connected to the car using Bluetooth so that we could use Apple CarPlay to display our route. Sometimes CarPlay would work, but most of the time, it was a disaster. The car has its own native Wi-Fi that appeared to be conflicting with our mobile Wi-Fi. We tried the native navigation system for a moment, but it proved crude and not user friendly. We abandoned CarPlay and just used Maps on the phone for the duration of the trip.
After a half an hour of screwing around in the parking lot of the rental car company, we finally got on the road to the nearby Bónus in Keflavík for groceries. The grocery stores in Iceland as in pretty much all of Europe are tiny and the selection is therefore necessarily limited. We bought crackers, cheese, salame, and some fruit. We would visit a grocery store about every other day. Krónan would prove to be the nicest, Bónus the most common and predictable, and Krambúðin the option of last choice.
After leaving the store, we set off to explore the Reykjanes Peninsula in counterclockwise fashion, stopping first at Garðskagaviti lighthouse well off the usual tourist circuit. On exiting the car, the fierce wind would bring us our first blast of sulfur, a common smell in volcanic areas, and send us digging in our luggage for more layers. Iceland is a windy country and this was our first experience with it although it was not a particularly windy day by Icelandic standards. Here in far southwest Iceland, there is nothing to stop the wind raging in off the open ocean.
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| Bundled Against the Fierce Wind at Garðskagaviti Lighthouse |
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| Greeted by a Razorbill |
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| Huge Raven Raided a Dumpster and Chased Trash Blown About in the Fierce Wind |
Our next stop was a pretty country church called Hvalsneskirkja, notably a rare stone church in a country of wooden churches. This church sits in verdant farm country with lots of horses in the nearby pastures, the first of many thousands of horses that we would see across the country.
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| Hvalsneskirkja |
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| Brooding Clouds Over Hvalsneskirkja |
I shot a few photos of the church in the spitting rain which was threatening to become a more serious shower as we pulled away and headed for the touristy Bridge Between Continents. The further we pushed east into the flat and treeless landscape, the more volcanic features became visible and the less grassy it became.
Iceland sits astride the tectonic plate boundary between the North American and European plates, a boundary called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that bisects the country from southwest to northeast. That is, half the country including the capital rests on the North American plate, while the other half rests on the European plate. Unlike in Oregon where the plates are colliding throwing up massive mountains, the plates in Iceland are pulling apart leaving visible rifts or rift valleys. The Bridge Between Continents or Miðlína ("midline") is a physical bridge built across a narrow part of the rift between plates and when we were there, new cracks in the ground attested to the continued drift of the two plates.
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| Rift Between Plates at Miðlína |
Just as soon as we arrived in the crowded parking lot, the wind whipped up and blew a fine rain sideways. We struggled against the wind and water long enough to walk across the symbolic bridge between Europe and North America, then retreated quickly to the car.
By this time, Ann was exhausted and the rain had her down a bit, so we canceled the remainder of our plans and drove directly to Reykjavík where we would arrive beyond the check-in time for our apartment to get warm and dry. I would have liked to see some of the new lava at Grindavík, but when we travel, there is nothing that we must do. If either of us is not up for something, we do not do it.
En route to town, apparently I pissed off a lorry driver in a roundabout, but I do not see how. Perhaps he was upset at another car and not me. In the two-lane roundabout, I was in the inner lane and the truck in the outer. We both exited at the same time, each in our own lanes, nothing seeming amiss to me. In Iceland, the inner lane has the right of way for exits, so no clue why the guy was hot. We live in a town of many roundabouts and almost no traffic lights, so I am quite practiced at navigating them. In any case, I left him in my rear view honking, flashing his bright lights, and gesturing.
Arriving at the address supplied by our host, we found a super nice third floor apartment with lots of on-street parking, a bonus in any city and a rarity in Reykjavík. After toting our luggage up to the third floor, we took hot showers and changed out of our stale travel clothes.
Although it was raining down south on the peninsula, up north in Reykjavík it was merely windy with strong gusts at times. The lack of rain let us open the windows in our apartment to cool it off. With essentially free geothermal energy in Iceland, many residences seem overheated by American standards. In this apartment, opening several casement windows also had the benefit of letting us hear the pretty European Goldfinches singing in the birch trees just outside the window. With their brick red face masks and buffy backs, they do not resemble American Goldfinches in coloration, but they sound remarkably similar.
While watching "Yellowstone" on Netflix, I opened a bottle of Barbaresco and dug into our groceries for salame and cheese for dinner. While in the U.S., "Yellowstone" is not available on Netflix, our European IP address let us watch it without issue. As we would everywhere in Iceland, we brought the mobile Wi-Fi hotspot inside with us so that we never went without an internet connection and we never needed to get on another Wi-Fi network. That little device was fantastic!
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| Celebrating Iceland with Barbaresco Note the Outstanding Wine Glass |
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| Checking out Some Local Cheeses |
Annie passed out at 17:30 local, as in, was not conscious 90 seconds after closing her eyes. I stayed up for an additional three hours catching up on my notes and reviewing plans for the next few days. I noted that it stays light late longer than at home. I took the photo of the dusk skyline at the top of this post just before I dozed off.
Wednesday August 27, Recovering from Jetlag
I dozed poorly for many hours, if I slept at all while listening to intermittent rain showers throughout the night. I finally fell fast asleep after 0400 and awoke extremely hard at 1015. It took us until after noon to motivate ourselves to go find coffee. We finally walked to the closest outpost of Reykjavík Roasters and then afterward to a nearby Bónus for more groceries.
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| Coffee and Croissants at Reykjavík Roasters |
In planning this trip, I assumed that we would have a hard time doing anything today, so I scheduled time to visit Reykjavík at the end of our trip. After coffee, we thought about walking about more downtown but we deferred that to our final day because we were exhausted and our current apartment is much further from downtown than the one we booked for our final two nights in Reykjavík
As we wandered back to our apartment, I noticed that the most common street tree is the European Mountain-ash, aka Rowan in Britain, cousin to our Cascade Mountain-ash. These trees are hanging with orange berries that are perhaps a week or two more ripe than ours at home. We would see the two most common large thrushes, the Common Blackbird and the Redwing, raiding the berries where our American Robins have not yet started consuming the berries.
The common garden flowers include blue larkspurs and golden lysimachias, giving the gardens of Reykjavík a similar feel to those of Anchorage, replete with tall and lush plants born of a location with moderate temperatures, bountiful rain, and long hours of sunshine.
The architecture feels European and fairly modern, masonry and glass, not really a surprise in a country which the Viking settlers denuded of trees centuries ago. It is, however, a complete change from our architecture in the Pacific Northwest where logging is a principal industry.
Resting for the true beginning of our vacation tomorrow, we napped, watched more Netflix, ate a bit more salame and cheese for dinner, and went to bed early, too tired and jetlagged to do more.
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