Last plane from Reykjavik

Our last day in Reykjavik we opted for an early lunch at Café Babalú in recognition that we’d be in the airport and in the air and didn’t really want to have to break out our packed lunch / dinner until we had to. After we’d wandered a bit, and enjoyed the eclectic atmosphere of Babalú, we made our way back to Eiriksson to sit in the sun for awhile … and were greeted by a beautiful 22° halo around the sun. We sat and watched tourists for awhile and enjoyed knowing that we had only to drag our bags up from the office to be on our way.

Reflecting upon this trip, we’ve decided that Summer in Iceland is much less of the Iceland we love. The midnight sun is fascinating, but it’s also very tiring, meaning that we didn’t get the much-needed rest we had planned on, in taking three days to decompress. Also, the sheer number of people visiting — and some of the noise late at night/early in the morning that we didn’t get to enjoy the solitude we crave. On our next visit, we will make certain that there’s a decent amount of snow and rain and darkness, to keep the tourists down a bit and to help it be the land of mystery we’ve enjoyed. (Yes, there’s a tourist season somewhere for everyone…)

If you love sunshine, have endless energy, and like crowds, visit in the summer. If you seek solitude and more individual interactions, save your visits for the rest of the year.

On the way to the airport, D. attempted to catch some views of some of the more isolated homesteads between Reykjavik and Keflavik. Some are well-kept and look like the people just wanted to live a bit off of the beaten track. Others, though, speak of long-term neglect, and make us wonder whether someone just couldn’t have salvaged something before the place went to ruin. The way the houses in many cases just seem to sink back into the land reminded us of parts of Alaska and the high mountain areas in Northern Italy, on the Austrian border. It’s something to do with farmsteads, maybe — perhaps they’re only used for a time deliberately? Who knows.

Also along the way, though, we spotted many places where people had piled rocks into simple pillars, or into difficult balancing acts. We also spotted several places where there were rocks which had been set up to resemble people, apparently. These aren’t small rocks, so we figure that they must have had to use heavy machinery or a lot of coordinated muscle power to get them into place. We wonder, will someone in the future study these things and determine that they were of some particular significance, much as we study such things from ancient peoples and ascribe meaning? Or will they (rightly?) determine that someone was simply bored and had time on their hands, so decided to make use of the locally-abundant resource of lava rocks?

For the Iceland-SF leg of our Reykjavik exit, we were overtired from the endless sun and unable to sleep or rest. Twitchy and needing distraction, we slogged through movies — Eragon (we barely made it through, it was so awful), Sherlock Holmes (we thought it was sort of like James Bond meets Victorian Europe, it wasn’t faithful to Holmes at all, but had nice clothes), and finally wrapped up by watching Astropia – a quirky, random pick that we just thought looked weird enough to qualify as Entetainingly Bad SFF. Astropia is an Icelandic film, subtitled in English, and is a love note to gamers. We truly enjoyed it, and suggest that you watch it (available at the link) if you’re at all geeky or into comic books, role playing, gaming or even if you’re just interested in spending an oddly endearing hour and a half.

After three movies and numerous trips to annoy the stewardesses by asking for water (one gets used to them being sullen, and does it anyway) we finally arrived in Seattle. Customs there– which we had dreaded — was a breeze, and the agent who scanned our bags and then pawed through them (“your cheese showed up as liquid on the scan, so I’m going to scan them again separately”) even asked if he could repack for us! (We declined.) The Seattle Airport is organized and quiet – at least where we were – and was a nice place to have our packed dinner (rye crackers, cheese, hummous, veggies).

After hours of sitting around in SeaTac the airline announced that they were offering an upgrade to first class for $50, in order to accommodate the full flight and the stand-by people they’d oversold to — tsk, tsk, Alaska Air! — and we gratefully accepted. It wasn’t exactly luxury, in a small plane, but having a seat where we weren’t pressed sweatily against others for an additional two hours made a difference in our sanity, making it well worth the money. Neither of us had sat in first class before, and have since decided that the biggest difference is that the flight staff NEVER LEAVE YOU ALONE. ” Can I get you something else?” is the question of the day, and unfortunately, as the stewardess couldn’t speed up time, we merely wanted to be left alone! By 1 a.m., it was finally over — we were picked up, driven to our temporary home, and settled, had dug through our (4 identical) suitcases to find our evening toiletries, peeled ourselves out of our gross traveling clothes, showered, and crashed into bed.

It’s good to be here, though we’re still vastly low-energy, T.’s face is covered in hives (we’re still not sure what that is about) and we spend time sitting around marveling at the abundance of sunshine and summer fruit, staring, and smiling in a vague fashion at the parade of relatives wandering through hugging us and asking us if we want another bite of artichoke or watermelon (Yes, please, and thank-you.). Thanks to REALLY hydrating, we are adjusted to Pacific Time mostly, and will each be back working electronically tomorrow — T. has novels to craft and revisions to finish, and D’s sure his boss would like to hear from him sooner rather than later. Until next time…

-D & T