The Best Laid Plans . . .

 

As Robert Burns said, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice and Men gang aft agley” (often go awry),¹ and last week’s blog post reminded us that we can’t predict the future. Put those two together, and you have a roadmap for our latest international travel adventure.

The plan was to spend six days traveling on our own in Iceland and then fly to Ireland for a two-week tour. After doing our sightseeing in Iceland, we headed for the airport hotel for our next-day flight to Ireland. The tour company wanted a COVID test before joining the group, so we took that when we got to the hotel. Unfortunately, Roland tested positive. (I never did.) We ended up cancelling the tour (which we have since rescheduled) and spending six days living in the airport hotel before coming home.

Fortunately, while life calls for constant adjustments to our plans, the changes don’t always have to be devastating. The hotel was relatively comfortable, the food was decent, we had plenty of reading material, and both the airline and the tour company rolled over our payments so that all we were out was the hotel bill and meals while living at the airport. More importantly for me, I had several manuscripts in the cloud and managed to get quite of bit of work done.

And we did get Iceland in. Here are a few photos. The one at the top of this post is the Northern Lights from Hotel Anna in the countryside. The next one was taken flying over Greenland, and the following two are Hallgrims Church in Reykjavik and a view of Reykjavik from the tower of Hallgrims Church.

These photos were taken at the Arbaejarsafn Open Air Museum. The first is a church, and the second shows Roland standing in front of a separate vestry building.

The next two are scenic pictures taken while traveling through the countryside following a route called “The Golden Circle.”

These three were taken at Thingvellir National Park. (Actually, the Th is a funny-looking P.) The first shows the Almannagja, where North America and Europe meet, the second is Oxararfoss (foss means waterfall), and the third is the foot of Oxararfoss, which you can’t see from the top.

Our second day on The Golden Circle was a water day. Not water sports, but natural water features. The first is Stokkur Geysir, which was across the street from our hotel. The others are all waterfalls: Gullfoss, Seljalandsfoss, and two of Skogafoss. You can see the long walk to the top of Skogafoss, which neither Roland nor I took.

We saw the sunset and the Northern Lights from the grounds of the Hotel Anna on The Golden Circle near those last two waterfalls.

The next two photos show buildings at the Skogar Folk Museum and a nearby cave house, which does extend back under the mountain. It was probably used for storage rather than living in, but the early Icelanders took advantage of the caves and built entrances on them.

Finally, I must close with a photo from our airport home. This art is called “The Nest” and shows a jet being born from an egg.

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¹ From “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns.