A Trip to Iceland

What a fabulous choice for a trip AWAY from Texas, leaving August 2nd.  But it wasn’t planned that way.  A couple of years ago, when granddaughter Kathryn was awarded her A & M full scholarship we found out that it included some money for study abroad……and we told her that wherever she went, we would meet her before or after for a side trip.

Well, when it turned out that she was going to be in Bonn, Germany from July 4 to August 4, we did some rethinking.  Neither she nor we were able to go on a trip before then and I flat out told her that I did NOT want to go to Europe in August.  Everyone is off work and the AC all over Europe is insufficient for a Texan used to good AC!  So we thought about it and came up with meeting in Iceland.  And then we decided that she could room with her 17-year-old brother Michael (who has never had a special trip with us unless it was with the whole family).

So Michael drove to our lake house on Tuesday afternoon and we had dinner then drove to the Marriott Courtyard at the Austin airport; we arrived at 9:40 p.m. and asked for a 3:15 wakeup call to make the 4:00 a.m. shuttle to the airport.  Our plane left at 5:45 a.m. for JFK.  We had four plus hours in JFK after no food on Jet Blue so we went to the food court for pizza (us) and McDonalds (M).  Thank God we ate that because our menu items in Saga Class (Business) were way too scary to eat.  Appetizer was Atlantic Char, etc.; main course was Salted Cod or Reindeer Sausage, some weird pate and cold cuts — it was a maybe!  Neither John nor I would order any of it; our flight attendant let us order off of the coach food for pay menu.  We each had a ham and cheese baguette and Pringles — worked fine!  And the takeoff champagne/water toast was perfection!

John took a great shot about 11:30 last night — the sky above the clouds just before we landed:

We finally got to our rooms and by the time we unpacked just a little, found our meds, refused to set our phone knowing we would not make breakfast !!  We did not!  John and I awakened about 11:40 a.m. and wakened Michael at 12:30.  Our first act, after getting out the cobwebs, was to search for the famous hotdog stand for lunch since we missed breakfast — by a mile!!!

After our “interesting hotdog experience”, we immediately walked up to the Hallgrimskirja Church.  Don’t worry — we have NO idea how that’s pronounced….but it is a beautiful church with wonderful views!

Then we shopped our way down the shopping street stopping for some organic, vegan, etc. ice cream that they made “on the spot”. Really!  And it was delicious.

At six p.m. I took a pill that was supposed to be like a prescription Zantac.  Oops — we discovered later that I had taken a sleeping pill.  Boy, was dinner a struggle; I felt like I was woozy drunk the entire time…..but, of course I had ordered two gin and tonics  (it was 2 for 1 happy hour) before I realized the problem.  Needless to say, I slept well!!!!!

We awakened ten minutes before our 6:30 a.m. alarm.  A good sign for jet lag.  Of course, we had gone to bed at 8:30 p.m. the night before 🙂

The big adventure awaited us:  a helicopter ride to the volcano and a descent into it — about 180 yards into the earth.  Wow!  Such a once-in-a-lifetime event.

 

 

Then we flew back to the airstrip seeing base camp and Reykjavik along the way!

 

We walked over to meet our travel agent after that — Embla with Guide to Iceland.  We thought she did a terrific job!  But first we had a great pizza at the new Jamie Oliver’s Iceland!!

We followed that with a trip to the Harpa Concert Hall — really beautiful and interesting architecture.  After that we walked (I rode) down the sidewalk by the ocean to a wonderful sculpture.

And then, Kathryn arrived from Frankfurt to join us for the trip.  We went out to dinner, walked up toward the church once more……and had to stop one more time for the terrific ice cream from Joylato!!!

The next morning we left Reykjavik to circumnavigate the whole island…..but that’s the next chapter.

Thanks for joining us,

Beth