A Very Brief Visit To Iceland

Last spring, as we were making plans for the summer and beyond, Vicki found one of her usual screaming deals on airfares from London to the US: Iceland Express. We booked. Then we discovered that Iceland Express is not Iceland Air, and that comments in TripAdvisor and elsewhere on Iceland Express were not uniformly favorable (enforcement of weight limits, surcharges, seat sizes, food pricing, lateness, cancellations, etc). So, for some months, we were not looking forward to the return trip.

Iceland Express turned out to be just fine for us. Pretty much on time, despite weather issues in London, comfortable, and it got us where we wanted to go. It's a budget airline, so everything is for sale; or you can bring your own, as we did (cleaning out the cupboards...sausage from Colmar, pistachios from Gaziantep, cheese from Amsterdam, gingerbread cookies from Aachen, etc). Iceland Express jets you first to Rekjavik, Iceland, in three or so hours, and then, after an hour or less in Rekjavik (enough to visit the duty-free stores and sample Icelandic vodka), five hours to Boston, where we are presently. We give Iceland Express 4 stars; 5 when you factor in the price. Plus our passports now sport Iceland stamps.

First sight of Iceland; had I been sitting on
the port side, I would have seen Surtsey;
but not Iceland

Bombardier view

Mostly pretty barren, with lots of volcanic

features...crater lake

A mini caldera

Approaching Rekjavik

Landing

Taking-off

Temporarily well-behaved volcano