Wednesday, July 13. Flight home was unexciting, except for the 90 degree weather at JFK. Terminal 2 is inaccessable without a 3 minute walk outside! Fortunately, I was dressed for San Diego and not Iceland, but nonetheless it was inconceivable that JFK’s terminals are not connected indoors. (Post-trip note: I tested negative for Covid on the 14th.)

Very nice trip, though a little surprising.

• I expected a mountainous island, but virtually the entire trip was along a wide expanse of flat coastline. The weather makes growing things difficult, not the terrain. The mountains were alwasy visible, but not reachable.
• Roads are incredibly excellent. Also few. People just don’t live inland.
• Not a single hotel had true blackout curtains. The lack of darkness did impact my sleep quite a bit.
• Cash money is a thing of the past. Other than a few tips, I never needed cash. Seriously, I never saw anyone using cash.
• My usual inability with languages was tripled here. Not a clue. A telling fact is that Anna made very little effort of teach us much Icelandic.
• Their history is so interwoven with legend, I sense that the average Icelander doesn’t know which is which. More to the point, they don’t really care. Their “sagas” are what they are, regardless of whatever level of truth that is in them.
• Icelanders demand that immigrants learn their language (most preferably without an accent), but are welcoming within this one caveat. A huge percentage of lectures were given by peple who weren’t born in Iceland.
• I suppose the most surprising (and telling) feature was the total lack of a nationally funded emergency rescue force. This one fact illustrates, on several levels, their cultural position on personal responsibility. That there is a volunteer organization that performs this service (and that it is mostly called upon to bail out foreigners) is the cultural outlier.

Greenland was very different in a backward kind of way, though it was stressed repeatedly that East Greenland was a poor example of Greenland as a whole. West Greenland is more modern. However, their use of credit cards over cash once again illustrated how far behind the curve the USA is.

Overall, I rank the trip inside the volcano as the best experience, including the walk back through classic Icelandic weather. The boat ride through the ice fields was also magical. The goats and horses (and their caretakers) were great. Their cod, char and lamb is delicious, if a little repetitive. Prices are (as advertised) incredibly high. The country is beautiful, both naturally and manmade. I am left with a desire to return when there’s a setting sun and snow on the ground. But I have other places yet to visit once, before I go anywhere twice.