Iceland Day 1

---

Iceland isn't as far away as you think. It's about a six hour flight from Baltimore, and we took a red-eye, arriving around 6:30 am local time. I woke up as the plane was descending and looked out on a bright blue morning. A layer of clouds several thousand feet below us obscured the ground. As we descended into the clouds, I watched intently out the window, waiting for that first view of land as we broke the cloud cover. Then we landed. In the clouds. Which turned out to be fog. I never saw the ground until we were about five feet from it. That was kind of weird, but I guess if you fly to Iceland, you land no matter what the conditions are.

Rachel and I were meeting several of her friends at the airport, who were all flying in from New York. At least we hoped to meet them, because we were scheduled to stay that day and night at her friend Christine's Grandmother's apartment and had absolutely no idea where that was. But we found Rachel's friends easily enough--they were buying liquor at the duty free store next to baggage claim. So we bought some too, and then got some kroner out of the ATM and bought our bus tickets to Reykjavik. Once we arrived at our lodgings for the day the group all went to sleep. Then we went and met Christine's cousin Birna in downtown Reykjavik and had a nice tour of the town. Birna would prove invaluable over the course of the week, keeping all of us on track during the hike and providing lots of cool local knowledge about the area. After touring Reykjavik we were provided a wonderful meal of salmon and potatoes by Birna's parents, and they gave the group lots of advice about our hiking trip, which we would be doing for the next four days, and which they had done some years earlier. Their stories about the hike were pretty scary: horrible weather, tough terrain, and likely death or disfigurement seemed imminent. So we went home to sleep and get ready for the hike.

---

Photos

Reykjavik
Birna told us what this building, and the others you see, are, and I know they are significant. I think this might be the Prime Minister's place. Birna? You out there to enlighten us?

First Night's Feast
Lisa took this picture of the group.