I woke up, careful to not disturb Michelle, at 4:15am hoping to see the Aurora Borealis. I walked along the harbor at 5:30am for about an hour. While I didn’t see the Northern Lights I did enjoy the sound of the waves hitting the rocky breaker walls and watching the first hint of dawn tinge the sky. I returned to the hotel and slept another two hours.
We awoke at 8:30am and took our showers then headed downstairs for breakfast around 9am. Returning to the room we packed, I off-loaded pictures and blogged a bit, and I realized we hadn’t watched Icelandic television yet! As it was the middle of the day the only thing interesting on was a the doings at their parliament, the Alþingi (roughly pronounced ‘all-thing-eh’). Didn’t understand a word but it was still neat nonetheless.
We checked out around 11am and sat in the lobby until FlyBus picked us up around noon. There was a short ride to the central bus station and, owing to the nicer weather (of course!) got to see the cathedral practically glowing with the mid-day light. Hopped on a bigger bus to the airport, along the way seeing a rainbow, and enjoying views of the low mountains basking in the sun as well as the tundra-like terrain.
We arrived at the airport around 1pm. It was a confusing place — supposedly automated but due to the Byzantine processes just as many people were standing around helping people through the process as would be required to do the work themselves. That’s the problem with airports, you can’t exactly teach people how to fish and then rely on them to not need help in the future — they’re gone!
By 2pm we had made it through security and hurried through the stupid stinky duty free area and got lunch. Michelle had a bagel with cream cheese and an apple caramel muffin while I had a bacon and egg salad with lettuce croissant and chocolate muffin (which was delicious!).
Our gate, D32, finally displayed on the departure board and we made the long walk to just stand in line a bit before finally getting on the plane around 4:30pm. Took off at 4:45pm. The window seat would’ve been empty (which would’ve been nice) but a nice PhD student at NCSU got bumped to it. It turned out to be not so bad because she was great and the three of us chatted for a couple of hours which made the six hour flight go much faster. She was a dual national US / Swiss.
After eating our pre-ordered ham and cheese baguettes we tried to sleep a bit but I ended up just watching “War Dogs” on the TV (discreetly) across the aisle and up a row.
We landed around 7:45pm. Passport control took a bit longer than usual as there was only one guy working but luggage and customs were a breeze. Addison picked us up around 8:45pm and we headed home, picking up McDonalds along the way, and were in bed around 11pm.