Traveling (4/30)



It was all I could do yesterday to get to my room at the hostel and collapse.  So much for a blog entry! The trip to Reykjavik was a full eight hours. Without the benefit of airline movies, it felt really long. My seatmate was a young man who had just finished high school and was traveling to Europe for the first time to visit cousins studying in Edenborough. It was fun to sense his excitement – and to share the tediousness of the eight hours. While it was still light, I was able to see some gorgeous, snow-capped mountains.  Given the timing within the flight, I’m guessing they were the Canadian Rockies. I read and knitted and made plans for the days in Frankfurt, and read some more and knitted some more.
Finally, we arrived in Reykjavik at 4:00 AM their time.  A bus took us from the plane to the terminal. It was 2 degrees above freezing, and there was light drizzle.  I was wearing sandals, and I quickly put on a sweatshirt over my tee-shirt. The passengers were all hungry from minimal purchases on the WOW flight, so we all crowded into the bar – the only thing open at that time – like a swarm of locusts, eating up everything they had in store. It was dark when we arrived. (I had wondered whether it would be light or dark, given how far north Iceland is. It WAS dark, but by the time the next plane took off – around six, it was light.) Iceland is the hub for WOW Air, so there were a variety of planes taking off within the next couple of hours. As I waited to board the Frankfurt-bound flight, I saw a whole host of flight attendants wearing their signature color – a cross between purple and hot pink (I don’t have a name for the color) – pass by on their way to other flights.
It was a comparatively short flight to Frankfurt – 3 hours – and I tried to sleep, without success, for that leg of the journey. At the airport in Frankfurt, I grabbed my suitcase and left the airport without anyone checking either my passport or my luggage tag. I remember walking through a door that said, “Nothing to declare,” and that was it.  What a difference from the bureaucracy of entering the U.S.! Thanks to Google Maps, I was able to make my way on the two trains that took me to the hostel where I had reservations. My room wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I stashed my suitcase, and walked down the street to find something to eat. It was a gorgeous day – probably around 75ºF. I found a place selling barbecued chicken and I sat outside to eat it. Then back at the hostel, my room was ready and I crashed!

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