July 19 – Reykjavik to St. Louis: Got up around 8:00. Fixed scrambled eggs with leftovers from last night about 9:00. We left about 10:00 and went nearby to Perlan, which is something like our Science Center. Its attraction is an ice cave and timeline history of the glaciers and how they will all melt away in the next couple of hundred years. Ice cave is kept at well below freezing so no drips of water on the visitors. Was created using ice from the glaciers. Also could see chunk of a glacier with black lava lines showing when volcanoes under them have erupted. Fun and educational. The building has a large glass dome on top and an area we could go outside and do a 360 view of the city.
Left there about 11:45 for the brief drive back to the AirBnB where we said goodbye to our wonderful hostess and put our luggage into the Skoda Olympia, our Hertz vehicle of the trip. Found out when we checked in we had driven over 2,500 km, which is about 1,600 miles. Wowzer.
We drove out onto the Reykjanes Peninsula, drove past the airport and out to the tip where there is the Gardur Lighthouse. Nice and isolated and we wondered what the folks who live there do! Stopped to fuel up and I got a sandwich which Donna bought some wool … nice grocery store and nice discount store.
We were early at the airport, checked our baggage, and saw our flight was delayed since the inbound airplane was late. Went through security where, even though I had to take off my shoes and had zero in my pockets, I still “beeped” the scanner. So I was wanded and patted down before I could go on. Have no clue what triggered the scanner since I have gone through lots of them dressed exactly as I am today (including in Israel) and have not set them off.
Just like Disney World, once you clear security you are in the Duty Free area and its shops. We all bought some Brennivin to take home! Then into the main waiting area where there are shops and food. Found out the gate for our flight would not be posted for a couple of hours, but there was an estimate we’d leave at 6:50 (instead of the scheduled time of 4:30). So we sat around, had snacks, talked. When the gate was posted, we went through passport control and out to the gate where a long line had already formed even though boarding was at least an hour away. No seating area around the departure gates. We stood or sat until boarding started. Since I had Priority Boarding, I could get ahead of the crowd and go on board, stow by carryon stuff, and sit down. Lovely. J and D came on not too far after I did.
Seat 1A again. Bulkhead, but no big deal since plenty of legroom and overhead space for all that I have. Into the flight, I was given when I had pre-ordered in food: a vegetarian plate that had four big balls of falafel, some barley, an some chickpeas. Hot and tasty. Coffee was instant, but okay.
Hope to get into St. Louis about 9:00 CDT which is 2:00 AM in Reykjavik. Ah, well. It’s been a wonderful trip on so many levels. Being able to spend this much time with Donna and Jeff is a treat. And Jeff has been great in navigating us from place to place as well as picking out where we went and when. We had some long days. We had some wet and chilly weather. We had some sunny days or parts of them. Got to play with long exposures at waterfalls and moving water using a neutral density filter, something I’ve wanted to do and it plays into part of what I am presenting to Camera Club in September.
The scenery changes around every corner. There are different versions of lava fields – some smooth, some jagged, some moss covered. Large areas flat as they could be and covered with green. Almost no trees except where they had been planted as snow or wind breaks. Mountains with snow. Waterfalls all over the place besides the ones we stopped to shoot. Horse herds in vast fields. Large areas where hay was being cut and baled. Sheep, of course. Cliffs and varied coastlines. Black sand beaches. Geothermal areas and plants, hot springs (and Blue Lagoon). Glaciers and icebergs on their way to melting and moving to the ocean. We took a ferry out to a volcanic island and climbed through lava fields. And the Sun. I have written about the light and sky in an earlier post.
We ate great food (and, yes, it’s expensive) that included cod, langoustines, lamb fillet, lamb hotdogs, lobster soup (really langoustine soup), lamb soup, plokkfiskur as described in earlier post. We cannot think of any meal we had that was less than really good. And there was Brennivin! Whoa! Except for one morning, we had breakfast in our lodgings and fixed eggs and had the wonderful Icelandic sweet rye bread and skyr.
Really an interesting Summer with Israel followed closely by Iceland. Hard to beat next year.
Share this post
