My son and I will be leaving for our trip to Iceland in just over a week, and the trip is almost entirely planned. We ended up changing the itinerary, and simplifying it, which is usually a good idea. I'm quite guilty of over-cramming trips, just as I do with courses, figuring, I guess, that I can just cut things later. Every trip provides it's own challenges, as the trips to Jordan, Zanzibar, Spain/Portugal and India/Sri Lanka prove. In the case of the Iceland trip one of the things we've been struggling with is the precious few hours of daylight we have to play with. On the one hand that's sort of the point of the trip - it dramatically increases the chance that we'll get a rousing display of Northern Lights (which was the original impetus for the journey). On the other hand, it means that we need to maximize the daylight hours we have. Essentially, we don't want to do doing unprofitable travelling (obviously, some travelling is breathtaking) during our four and a half hours of daylight every day. We originally considered just taking the entire Ring Road around Iceland, but that sounds more like a summer trip with more time, than a week during the first week of January. So, we've decided to restrict it to three locations. We fly out of Montreal on the afternoon of 1 January, and arrive in Reykjavik at 4:30 in the morning on 2 January.
Our itinerary should, by all rights, have been finalized, but it's been maddeningly out of focus, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Part of it is our own inability to focus and our whimsical view of the trip. A couple days ago Gary sent me a link to an article about whether or not the volcano at Hekla was getting ready to blow or not, and this led us to change our itinerary to go see it - finally deciding to go check it out on my birthday. As my friend Mike Kelly opined, "it would make me really sad if Gary were killed in a volcanic eruption, but for you it would make a great 'drop the mike' moment as you walk off stage." Can't argue with that. The Icelanders have also been a bit difficult to lock down. We wanted to go further up into the Westfjords (see below) to stay at the Hotel Djupavik (half the pictures in their gallery are of the Northern Lights), but they finally responded by email this morning: "It's possible if the road is open. It can be tricky some time to come here in the middle of the winter. Let's stay in touch around 1st of January and see how the conditions are :)" I love the attitude. After forwarding the email on to my son, and proposing that I really want to stay there, but am somewhat uncomfortable with the uncertainty, my son replied, "I like the uncertainty." Clearly, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.
Our initial plan was to spend a day or two in the capital before heading out, but then we figured that we wouldn't be able to get into our room that day until afternoon - or if we did we'd just collapse into bed and waste half a day. Instead we're going to rent a car and immediately head north, with the goal of making it to the Westfjords, which should be around a four hour drive. I suspect we're going to end up staying in Holmavik, which initially drew our attention because it's the home of the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft. That said, we may go further to Djupavik, as described above, but I'd really like to lock this in today just to be done with it. What are we going to do in the Westfjords? I don't know, guess we'll figure out when we get there. There is also a museum devoted to sea monsters, but it's even harder to get to than Djupavik. After that we're going to head south and spend a couple days on the Sneafellnes Peninsula, getting a hotel in Stykkishholmur. We're staying at the Hofdagata Guesthouse, and we've been swapping emails with a very nice woman named Ella. Then the last two nights will be spent in Reykjavik itself, probably one night at the Kex Hostel and then one night out by the airport at the Base Hotel (which we ended up getting a free night stay from Travelocity because they screwed up something and I complained, which was nice of them). Initially we were going to duck it because it's free anyway, but it seems appropriately quirky so we're OK with it. All this means that we're just going to be scratching the surface of the western coast, with the one trip into the interior to try and get close to the Hekla volcano. That said, Andy Burkhardt sent me a cool story about a cryptid giant worm in the far east of Iceland and . . .
Our itinerary should, by all rights, have been finalized, but it's been maddeningly out of focus, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Part of it is our own inability to focus and our whimsical view of the trip. A couple days ago Gary sent me a link to an article about whether or not the volcano at Hekla was getting ready to blow or not, and this led us to change our itinerary to go see it - finally deciding to go check it out on my birthday. As my friend Mike Kelly opined, "it would make me really sad if Gary were killed in a volcanic eruption, but for you it would make a great 'drop the mike' moment as you walk off stage." Can't argue with that. The Icelanders have also been a bit difficult to lock down. We wanted to go further up into the Westfjords (see below) to stay at the Hotel Djupavik (half the pictures in their gallery are of the Northern Lights), but they finally responded by email this morning: "It's possible if the road is open. It can be tricky some time to come here in the middle of the winter. Let's stay in touch around 1st of January and see how the conditions are :)" I love the attitude. After forwarding the email on to my son, and proposing that I really want to stay there, but am somewhat uncomfortable with the uncertainty, my son replied, "I like the uncertainty." Clearly, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree.
Our initial plan was to spend a day or two in the capital before heading out, but then we figured that we wouldn't be able to get into our room that day until afternoon - or if we did we'd just collapse into bed and waste half a day. Instead we're going to rent a car and immediately head north, with the goal of making it to the Westfjords, which should be around a four hour drive. I suspect we're going to end up staying in Holmavik, which initially drew our attention because it's the home of the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft. That said, we may go further to Djupavik, as described above, but I'd really like to lock this in today just to be done with it. What are we going to do in the Westfjords? I don't know, guess we'll figure out when we get there. There is also a museum devoted to sea monsters, but it's even harder to get to than Djupavik. After that we're going to head south and spend a couple days on the Sneafellnes Peninsula, getting a hotel in Stykkishholmur. We're staying at the Hofdagata Guesthouse, and we've been swapping emails with a very nice woman named Ella. Then the last two nights will be spent in Reykjavik itself, probably one night at the Kex Hostel and then one night out by the airport at the Base Hotel (which we ended up getting a free night stay from Travelocity because they screwed up something and I complained, which was nice of them). Initially we were going to duck it because it's free anyway, but it seems appropriately quirky so we're OK with it. All this means that we're just going to be scratching the surface of the western coast, with the one trip into the interior to try and get close to the Hekla volcano. That said, Andy Burkhardt sent me a cool story about a cryptid giant worm in the far east of Iceland and . . .
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