Adventures Overseas 16/16

These sixteen updates will be the condensed and often more erratic version of my adventures overseas, comprised of the updates that I sent home to my family at the time.

Author's Disclaimer: The following were written when I traveled overseas with my sister. They were the short and sweet version of what was going on in my daily journal. Often, I watered things down so that our parents wouldn't know how scared we really were or how bad a hostel really was. We didn't want to scare them. Also, I wrote these updates on my iPod, and in the interest of authenticity, I haven't edited or changed the formatting much. This may be less to do with authenticity and more to do with all those darn buttons I'd have to press if I edited it all. Anyway, there are plenty of little typos to go around I'm sure. I'm sorry. They bug me, too.

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Update 16: December 5, 2018 – WEDNESDAY

I never did sent this Update 16 to the family. I reasoned that there was no cause to write it, since I could just tell them when I got home. Now I will attempt to condense my journal pages into something short and coherent.

So, on the 2nd, we spent an unhappy night in the airport. I know at the beginning of this trip I composed an update that regaled you with all the reasons that sleeping in an airport sucks. But it was better with Sister, because I could direct all my angst at her.

First of all, we ran around, checked our tickets for information on our luggage, checked the Norwegian Airlines baggage allowance carts, and ran around some more, then sat down in defeat: we could not figure out what our baggage situation was. We were pretty sure they were over the allowance size, but our tickets made it sound like we could carry on the massive things. We decided we'd just have to wait until there was staff available to ask.

We bought a deck of cards and thought it would be a fun thing to wile away the hours by playing poker for the pistachios that we had. Unfortunately for me, I could not win a single stinking game, and this made me extraordinarily irate. Finally, thirsty after chowing down on her abundance of pistachios, Sister suggested that the next hand that won got to sit and rest while the loser found water.

Of course I lost. So off I went, too tired and cranky to be graceful about losing.

About two hours before our flight, I got up and started repacking some things, getting everything ready so we could get our bags dealt with. I looked at the ticket again, and then at my bags again. Finally, something clicked. It was a memory. A memory of my 'leather' bag from Florence, which I had bought specifically so that I could use it to pack extra carry-on items in. Because the tickets we had booked to fly out of Rome gave us checked luggage and a carry-on item. Because it was our last few days abroad, so we didn't really care if our luggage got lost.

Feeling like an utter boob, I began throwing stuff into my carry-on bag that I actually wanted in it. Now that I knew the system, I packed everything that I could need for Iceland. So, my warmest stuff and my toothbrush.

When Sister came back, I explained to her the exciting news. She called me a buffoon, but I know I am not a complete buffoon, because I did remember in the end.

Anyway, we and our baggage made it safely to Iceland.

It was strange to take off just as the sun is rising, then land 5 hours later in Iceland when the sun was still rising!

We got a shuttle to our hostel, then went to a mall to get some food and some gloves.

On the 3rd, we slept in late, but the sun was still rising at 11 am when we ventured out into the cold.

We went to a beach nearby to collect some shells. There was a hot tub there, outdoors, where about a dozen people were sitting in. They would walk down to the icy sea water every once in a while and comoletely submerge themselves, then go back to the hot tub! Crazy!

Reykjavik is a super cute Christmas-y kind of a town, and we really enjoyed wandering around it, checking out the shops. We made our way to the famous hotdog stand, which is mentioned on most of the 'Top 10 Things to do in Iceland' lists, as well as in Jim Gaffigan's book on food. The hotdogs were definitely the bomb.com. In fact, once we had had one apiece, we wondered how they'd disappeared so fast, and decided to get another one each. We could have gone for another one, but that would just be not right. Three hotdogs, no matter how good they are, is not a respectable amount.

On the 4th, our last full day overseas, we went on a tour bus to see some Iceland sites. We went to a farm that uses thermal energy to power a greenhouse, where they grow tomatoes. They ship in the greenhouse materials, the seeds, the dirt, the fertilizers, the chemicals, and the bees, and they grow their very own local tomatoes. It was interesting, but the farm also had some Icelandic ponies on it, so I mostly went and petted those. They were unbelievable fuzzy.

After that, we went to a big old geyser that is one of the biggest in the world. That one only goes off when there's earthquakes, but there's a smaller one nearby that shoots 25-35 meters every 5-15 minutes. We had quite a bit of time to stand around, drink some of the hot chocolate we'd packed for ourselves, and get startled every time the geyser went off. It was spectacular!

Iceland has a lot of beautiful wilderness to admire. From great, flat fields of volcanic rock, to sharp mountain ranges, to deep gorges with rushing rivers and water falls. I would love to go back in the summer and appreciate the landscape more; it was breathtaking.

On the 5th, we flew home! We got to the airport in Keflavik way earlier than necessary, but it's better to be safe than sorry. And we would have been very sorry, indeed, if any or all of my anxiety-induced pre-flight dreams came true. Anyway, it's a rather large airport to wander around, so there were plenty of places to sit. We also took advantage of the duty free and brought home some Christmas presents with the extra Icelandic krona we had.