July 24, 2017. Tarmac of the Reykjavik Airport.
I told Stephanie I shouldn’t start writing my blog after the forty minute random security check because my writing would be too poisoned by the frustration, but maybe it’s time for a venomous blog entry. Maybe what I want, right now, is exactly, to capture the tang of aggravation at the end of a luxurious long holiday in Europe, on a flight traveling backwards in time, such that we will arrive in Seattle only 45 minutes on the clock after we’ve left Iceland, and the anger, too, will be forgotten.
Amelia is ten rows behind me, in the center seat, alone, and she is sweating with the anxieties of this airport, which included being guided to a self-serve baggage check-in that didn’t move because the computers were all stalled, and the attendants didn’t communicate or, it seemed, do anything to get things moving. Eventually a line worked and we put our bags through it. I think. It mostly included the random security check after security and after passport control that started with what seemed to be a simple malfunction scanning our boarding passes through a turnstile; but one person after the next asking for help was shuffled to a long line and told, You’ve been randomly selected for a security check. I yelled out across the crowd to Maisie, and she wasn’t sure what to do. When Stephanie was also selected, we shouted for the girls to go ahead to the gate. Forty minutes later, and 12 minutes before our plane was supposed to depart (the engines are revving just now, twenty minutes late), Stephanie and I joined our daughters, but only after being in a long line with little explanation, and then given a bakery ticket, and then herded into another room, and then getting tickets called, and, in my case, culled into another room where order didn’t matter anymore. By the time two young dudes emptied my pockets and patted my hands and feet and hips and rifled through my bag without really looking and then sent me down an unsigned corridor, I still didn’t know where I was headed. But a few minutes later, and I was in line for boarding with my family, Amelia’s skin still jumping.
It doesn’t help that we haven’t eaten a full meal since lunch driving to Munich. The costs of things in Iceland is remarkable, starting with our $230 bus ride from the airport to the city (round trip), but reaffirmed continuously with $40 paperbacks and $20 bowls of soup. We thought the food on Icelandair was exploitative, but it turns out to be just costs. The end result is that I reflected more on how it is that poverty and obesity correlate in our country that subsidizes corn and wheat such that processed foods end up cheaper than fresh fruits and whole grains: while in Iceland, we ate burgers and fries ($85), hotdogs, a bag of peanuts, and prepackaged sandwiches ($60), and I can feel the bloat in my stomach. Splurging can’t happen always.
Surely with more time and experience, we could negotiate costs and resources better. But in the meantime, I remember again and again that one of my joys in traveling is the adventure of other cultures and architectures and people that doesn’t strain my resources, because it allows me to feel expansive in my movements and spirit and feel able to prolong and return a trip. Costs oppressed me.
And we never once handled the local currency, using plastic for everything, including visits to public toilets.
For Amelia, the airport was a concentration of absurdities. For myself, Iceland in general was the hardest visit.
But yesterday was spectacular day. I rented a car and we drove the Golden Circle. The greens of Iceland are such a deep contrast to the volcanic reds and basalts, and everywhere we drove, there was some new shape and color and sweep of green and mountain to marvel at. We stopped at a national park that features the dramatic separation of tectonic plates through which we walked. Hordes of people walked the boardwalks through the rock and over streams, the ocean just beyond that.
And we visited the geyser from which all other geysers are named, and found so much wonder in what I thought was just going to be a blow-and-leave encounter: the eerie geothermal blues and skinned-knee rusted mud around them, the steaming, breathing earth up and down the hill, and Strokkur, sending out its shocking violent burst into the sky every 4 to 8 minutes.
The waterfall Gullfloss also drew a big crowd, but we didn’t hear the water and couldn’t see it from the visitor center above, and everyone emerging from the stairs looked hot, and I joked, disapppointed. No one’s got the kite-in-a-windstorm expression they had at Geysir, I said. But that turned our to be crazy. Because as soon as we saw its wide, layered mouth, it was stunning, and then every step brought further awe, as one set of falls turned into two, the deeper tier more dramatic than the first, and then a rainbow flew from one end, and then the whole bow, 180 degrees was visible over the falls, and the greens on either side, and the mountains and glaciers behind them, made the falls still more bright, and then the colors of the rainbow deepened until it was the crispest, most palpable rainbow of my life, and then a double rainbow, and then something I didn’t even think possible: in the mists and dewy grass right before me, the bow of rainbow nearly completed a circle, a 320 degrees of shimmering color, and the waterfalls, as we got closer and closer, more textured and ferocious. Good one, water!
We were out in the wilds of Iceland and it was getting late, but I wasn’t worried about driving in the dark as the sun would never set. By 9:00 pm, we had one last thing to do, which is to swim in one of the hot spring pools of the secret lagoon. The floor of the pool was pebbled, and little burbling geysers spilled into the pool on its outer edges, the boardwalk around it all a welcome way to cool down and behold the sharp greens and rusted pockets of geothermal water away from the swim noodles and sweating glasses of wine and cameras encased in plastic.
We saw many sheep. We waited for some rustlers to herd their dozens of horses across the bridge and down the road and finally off it. We mused at the unearthly colors and plumes of steam.
And now we are on a plane home.
I told Stephanie I shouldn’t start writing my blog after the forty minute random security check because my writing would be too poisoned by the frustration, but maybe it’s time for a venomous blog entry. Maybe what I want, right now, is exactly, to capture the tang of aggravation at the end of a luxurious long holiday in Europe, on a flight traveling backwards in time, such that we will arrive in Seattle only 45 minutes on the clock after we’ve left Iceland, and the anger, too, will be forgotten.
Amelia is ten rows behind me, in the center seat, alone, and she is sweating with the anxieties of this airport, which included being guided to a self-serve baggage check-in that didn’t move because the computers were all stalled, and the attendants didn’t communicate or, it seemed, do anything to get things moving. Eventually a line worked and we put our bags through it. I think. It mostly included the random security check after security and after passport control that started with what seemed to be a simple malfunction scanning our boarding passes through a turnstile; but one person after the next asking for help was shuffled to a long line and told, You’ve been randomly selected for a security check. I yelled out across the crowd to Maisie, and she wasn’t sure what to do. When Stephanie was also selected, we shouted for the girls to go ahead to the gate. Forty minutes later, and 12 minutes before our plane was supposed to depart (the engines are revving just now, twenty minutes late), Stephanie and I joined our daughters, but only after being in a long line with little explanation, and then given a bakery ticket, and then herded into another room, and then getting tickets called, and, in my case, culled into another room where order didn’t matter anymore. By the time two young dudes emptied my pockets and patted my hands and feet and hips and rifled through my bag without really looking and then sent me down an unsigned corridor, I still didn’t know where I was headed. But a few minutes later, and I was in line for boarding with my family, Amelia’s skin still jumping.
It doesn’t help that we haven’t eaten a full meal since lunch driving to Munich. The costs of things in Iceland is remarkable, starting with our $230 bus ride from the airport to the city (round trip), but reaffirmed continuously with $40 paperbacks and $20 bowls of soup. We thought the food on Icelandair was exploitative, but it turns out to be just costs. The end result is that I reflected more on how it is that poverty and obesity correlate in our country that subsidizes corn and wheat such that processed foods end up cheaper than fresh fruits and whole grains: while in Iceland, we ate burgers and fries ($85), hotdogs, a bag of peanuts, and prepackaged sandwiches ($60), and I can feel the bloat in my stomach. Splurging can’t happen always.
Surely with more time and experience, we could negotiate costs and resources better. But in the meantime, I remember again and again that one of my joys in traveling is the adventure of other cultures and architectures and people that doesn’t strain my resources, because it allows me to feel expansive in my movements and spirit and feel able to prolong and return a trip. Costs oppressed me.
And we never once handled the local currency, using plastic for everything, including visits to public toilets.
For Amelia, the airport was a concentration of absurdities. For myself, Iceland in general was the hardest visit.
But yesterday was spectacular day. I rented a car and we drove the Golden Circle. The greens of Iceland are such a deep contrast to the volcanic reds and basalts, and everywhere we drove, there was some new shape and color and sweep of green and mountain to marvel at. We stopped at a national park that features the dramatic separation of tectonic plates through which we walked. Hordes of people walked the boardwalks through the rock and over streams, the ocean just beyond that.
And we visited the geyser from which all other geysers are named, and found so much wonder in what I thought was just going to be a blow-and-leave encounter: the eerie geothermal blues and skinned-knee rusted mud around them, the steaming, breathing earth up and down the hill, and Strokkur, sending out its shocking violent burst into the sky every 4 to 8 minutes.
The waterfall Gullfloss also drew a big crowd, but we didn’t hear the water and couldn’t see it from the visitor center above, and everyone emerging from the stairs looked hot, and I joked, disapppointed. No one’s got the kite-in-a-windstorm expression they had at Geysir, I said. But that turned our to be crazy. Because as soon as we saw its wide, layered mouth, it was stunning, and then every step brought further awe, as one set of falls turned into two, the deeper tier more dramatic than the first, and then a rainbow flew from one end, and then the whole bow, 180 degrees was visible over the falls, and the greens on either side, and the mountains and glaciers behind them, made the falls still more bright, and then the colors of the rainbow deepened until it was the crispest, most palpable rainbow of my life, and then a double rainbow, and then something I didn’t even think possible: in the mists and dewy grass right before me, the bow of rainbow nearly completed a circle, a 320 degrees of shimmering color, and the waterfalls, as we got closer and closer, more textured and ferocious. Good one, water!
We were out in the wilds of Iceland and it was getting late, but I wasn’t worried about driving in the dark as the sun would never set. By 9:00 pm, we had one last thing to do, which is to swim in one of the hot spring pools of the secret lagoon. The floor of the pool was pebbled, and little burbling geysers spilled into the pool on its outer edges, the boardwalk around it all a welcome way to cool down and behold the sharp greens and rusted pockets of geothermal water away from the swim noodles and sweating glasses of wine and cameras encased in plastic.
We saw many sheep. We waited for some rustlers to herd their dozens of horses across the bridge and down the road and finally off it. We mused at the unearthly colors and plumes of steam.
And now we are on a plane home.
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