Icelandair flies direct from Denver to Reykjavik these days. 7 short hours... unless you count the bus to the airport, meandering through TSA, perusing the stores for all sorts of things I don't need while the plane is being sanitized and the transit time from the airport to the hotel in Iceland. I don't count any of it, which is why I'm confused and tired when we finally arrive! However, I do have pics to remind myself later.
Goodbye Boulder! See you next week.
Spare hair, in case one needs it for the flight, vacation or life in general. I declined. Saving my money for other things, obviously.
Nope, wasn't saving my money for this either.
A beautiful evening to fly turned into a beautiful evening. We were blessed to witness an AMAZING Northern Lights display from the plane for about an hour somewhere over the far north of Canada. Some folks on the left side of the plane got earlier and brighter shows... and were actually able to take pics with cellphones! They let us briefly lean over their seats to see it, then it was back to the right side of the plane for us. Later, I got a couple of fuzzy, under-exposed pics, but they moved so quickly... like dancing clouds and the best way to witness this was actually with the naked eye.
We landed at 6am, which was midnight at home.
Was an early check-in meant to be? Alas no. At 8:30 it was still pretty pitch black and owing to sleep deprivation, it was getting harder and harder to tell it was morning or night too. In either case, without a room to recover in, we decided to brave the cold drizzle and made our way along the seaside path, to downtown Reykjavik to explore and eat and pass some time.
New friends were made.
Eyes were opened...
This churchly beauty was constructed over space and time between the end of WWII and the 80's. It is said to be of Icelandic architectural style and symbolic of a geyser. Located at the highest point in Reykjavik and being the tallest thing around, it is also easily seen from almost anywhere in the city and would, over the next few days, become the landmark that we used to navigate our way (homing pigeon style) around the city.
And I ticked a very important thing off my trip list: Find local bakery and indulge. (Bear in mind we'd had a bite to eat a the hotel, but that was a porridge, cucumber, toast and instant coffee - so not really that much since yesterday.)
This is Braud. It's spectacular. We took vanilla buns back to the hotel and after a 3 hr nap, woke to a delicious treat.
(It's conveniently located about a half block down the hill from the geyser church... making it easy to find and revisit!)
Our first Icelandic excursion took place later that night. We searched and searched and failed to find the Northern Lights and these church and fish-pier pics are all I have to show for staying up so late!
Northern Lights excursion rebooked for tomorrow... stay tuned.
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