The scooter police and a husband gone loco

We realized we'd left the safety and sanity of Homeland U.S.A. when we noted that the Security Police in the Iceland Airport sailed about the sleek modernist corridors on....scooters! (Just about the most fun job in the world!) (One of our fellow travelers noted that before their country fell into financial trouble a few years ago they probably had Segways). 

In any event, the whole Norway-via-Iceland was indeed a blessing in disguise, as one of our bloggers noted earlier.

The funniest (to me, at least) part of the first 48 hours was when Stan "I Sleep Anywhere, Anytime, Anyplace" Lucas got a lesson in Jet Lag.  He fell asleep in our awesome Iceland hotel and woke up a couple of hours later, threw open the curtains, convinced we'd missed our plane to Norway because it was so light out.  Then he decided he HAD to know what time it was so proceeded to turn on ALL the room lights so he could track down and read the one watch I had with the correct time. Then he proceeded to THROW open the curtains again, an hour later, because again he was dead certain the world had come to an end and an atomic bomb had blown outside. No, dear, just the 65 degree North sunshine. Still up, at 3 AM.  He tossed and turned the rest of the night, untossing every hour to double check the time and the position of the sun in the sky and, and, and....he was just plain out of his mind.

However, I can't really brag about my own lack of cultural coolness: Our room faced south west so naturally was frying hot when we arrived.  Gasping for air, we tried to open the window but it seemed stuck, so I, taking matters into my own hands, called the reception desk.

"How do we turn on the air conditioner?  We can't find it."

"Uh...this is ICEland.  We don't have air conditioning."  (Dumb tourist, was his thought bubble. Or worse.)

Bottom line: Iceland is GREAT, and Stan has been selling it up to anyone who will listen.  Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT, ask him about how great Iceland is unless you have 60 minutes to spare.

Carol Lucas -- June 26, Al, Norway

A Blessing in Disguise/ It Really Kinda Sucked

Excitement, expectations, and anticipation was high Tuesday afternoon for us 4 Norway-bound travelers arriving at sea-tac airport. We were going to be in Norway by this time tomorrow we all kept telling each other! Conversation started out lively and giddy when we first got to the terminal..... and then crawled to an almost non existent stand still during our 6 1/2 hour wait at Sea-Tac airport for our airplane to be considered "suitable" for flying............ hmmmm sketch.
Should Gabe and I count the number of things we invented to do for ourselves? Nevertheless, a lot of interesting people were also in our sticky situation, there was hottie Icelandic boy with the dreds in the far right corner (unfortunately never looked up from his ipad), nice Swedish family who helped me find my socks to the immediate left, and 2 groups of Germany-bound high school students from Portland. Some of the peeps from one school entertained us with a few songs sung in harmony during some point of the delay. That got annoying pretty fast. (This is Gabey: but it did sound nice)
So, continued by Gaberz:
Hokai, so: basically, the Iceland air chick would say, "so so far we don't know when we'll be able to take off, but I will go check with the crew and then I'll update you in about 20 minutes." and by that she meant "so I'll tell you that we're still screwed in an hour." and then finally, at 10:00 (no joke, and our plane was supposed to leave at 4:30) we got the update that we WEREN'T SCREWED FOREVER LIFE IS AWESOME ALL STARVATION IS SOLVED THE DYING ATMOSPHERE IS BACK TOGETHER AND THERE IS A PERMANENT CEASE-FIRE IN SYRIA, EGYPT, AND LIBYA!!!YAY! Except not the last three. It was still pretty awesome.
So then we boarded the plane took off sat there for seven hours and ima not talk about that cuz it's boring as crap, with the exception of Greenland looking pretty snazzy when we flew over it cuz it had crazy rocks n' snow n' stuff.

And so due to the crazy time zone mind-blowedness of us leaving at 10:50 pm in Seattle and arriving at noon the next day in Iceland, I had gotten an hour of crappy and broken up sleep and then it was all like, "Go check out Reykjavik yo and touch the Atlantic Ocean cuz it's not super freaking early in the morning even though according to your internal clock it should be." So basically we realized that Iceland is AWESOME and a bit weird and that the Atlantic Ocean is a bit chilly up at 66 degrees north latitude. Aaaaaaaand soooo basically that's what happened. Oh, and Keflavik Int'l Airport is, no joke, like a shopping mall that just happens to have planes going in and out of it.