Backfilling trip log...
Howdy everyone, So I am a sloth for writing about the trip, but here is the backfilled info on how it is all going. From Day 1, we flew out of Baltimore-Washington International at 8:45 pm and got to see a lovely sunset as we approached NYC. Sun sets here around 9pm these days, so that was nice, then settled in for our long flight via Iceland air. I thought this was a great idea because it was way cheaper and the long flight gets split up by the stopover in Iceland. Well, being a European airline dinner on the plane was not bad except Laurel was peeved by getting the "kids meal" which was supposed to be a pizza, really very large slab of white bread stuff with some tomato sauce and minuscule cheese on top. I tried it and it really was not great. My meal was some nifty meatballs with gravy and green beans with a great roll and Icelandic butter and a brownie. Pretty good all around. We couldn't sleep very well on the plane so Laurel played her new Animal Crossing game on the DS and continued her quest to re-read all the Harry Potter books before the 7th comes out while we are here. I was re-reading Pine and Gilmore's Experience Economy and playing sudoku on the DS and watched the in-flight entertainment of an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond and then First Knight (I think- the king Arthur story done with Sean Connery and Richard Gere) but quit when they followed that up with bad kids cartoons and then I love Lucy. The strange bit was that after it was dark for maybe 1 hour after sunset, we flew North into daylight, not a sunrise, just a horizon of daylight that we gradually flew into. This was cool because we were able to see the coastline of Iceland as we came into Reykjavik for landing at the airport which is right on the coast. The land here is craggy cliffs along the sea and then essentially tundra with rocky ground and very low hardy plants. Lots of evergreens clinging to the bits of soil. I suppose it wasn't frozen and was in the height of summer because as we landed and taxied around we saw huge swaths of purple that I realized were fields of lupine blooming like grape hyacinth but much larger and more robust sending spire of purple flowers up toward a brilliant blue sky. Unfortunately when we deplaned we were not close enough to get good pictures of these. :( I guess hitting daylight did keep us from seeing the northern lights. Then the strangeness started... Now, I expect a large degree of flexibility is necessary whenever traveling to another country as you need to warp yourself and your plans around whatever you might encounter next and this is part of what makes this an exciting ever-changing adventure. We deplaned from a staircase outside the airport in winter weather and walked in through a glass door to a very trendy modernist building that is advertised as one of the nicest airports in the world at 6:30am local time. Trick is, there was no desk with staff at the gate for you to ask where to go next since we had a connecting flight and I usually re-check our gate with said staff person just in case it has changed. Instead, all the storefronts are closed and a huge line is forming from the crowd of our plane passengers to go up an escalator with a security guard limiting entrance to the gate. So, we join the line and have faith that whatever this line is for, we will be through it and to our connecting flight in 1 hour. It does not necessarily help that most of the passengers speak Dutch, German, French, Spanish and the signs are all in Icelandic so none of us really know what is going on. Sheep, be the sheep... Anyway, we do get around the corner and up the escalator past the guard and then through another security gate where a woman is waving a laminated paper and pointing for people to give up their liquids again (I swear we did this in BWI) so I have to dig around to pull out my nasal saline and get it okayed as we go through security again and then we meet the passport desk. I am not really sure about this because as far as I know I am not visiting Iceland, just going through to another gate to end up in Amsterdam so now I am really not sure if we are in the right place, but we follow anyway since we now have nowhere else to go. When we get to the passport desk, the next security guard only glances at my passport and at me and waves me through but then gets Laurel's passport and spends about five minutes looking back and forth from her passport to her while Laurel does not help by squirming and laughing. I try to explain that the passport is two years old and was after a bad haircut accident (Laurel's shaved head) and that is why it looks like a boy is in the passport while a long haired girl is standing next to me. This did not seem to help, but eventually he did let her through as well. We then found the pathway to the gates and found the flight for Amsterdam so I left Laurel with the luggage to find some water. I found a bar and asked if they could take US dollars and got three bottles of water and a juice for us to drink since we were parched from the previous long flight. When I checked out, this ended up being $15, so I think the Icelandic water must be laced with gold. :) While we waited at the gate a large group of teenagers started collecting there from various countries sports teams and it appeared there were some international youth games in Reykjavik and these were teens going back home to the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Czechoslovakia. This meant a noisy flight, but it was only about an hour to Amsterdam that we passed with a breakfast of eggs and rolls with butter again with coffee and tea before we both started rolling our heads as we were now tired enough to pass out sitting up. When we arrived in Amsterdam, we had no customs and no passport check, so I guess these do not happen between EU countries and Iceland must be part of the EU. We went to the baggage claim area and waited for about an hour for baggage to show up while the teenagers threw things on the baggage track and rode around in circles on the baggage track. When we emerged with our luggage, Alexandra (my French sister in law) and Adrien (nephew) were waiting for us. We went directly downstairs to the trains and caught the next train to Den Haag around 3:30pm and went to Lawrence and Alexandra's house. There we settled in and I updated my classes and we hung out and stayed awake for the rest of the day so we could try to get on schedule.