Jane completed our final packup in the hotel room, and in addition to all of our stuff, she was able to fit 8 local beer cans and bottles into our very limited space. I'm still not sure how she pulled that off!?!?
After a relaxing morning in the room, we set out for a 20 minute walk to the BSI bus terminal, where we would catch the Flybus shuttle to Keflavik airport. Little did we know that we would spend the next 45 minutes listening to a right wing diatribe from a U.S. couple and woman in front of us, about all the troubles in the world being the fault of Biden and Antifa and vaccines and the left in general.
We arrived at Keflavik airport very early, some five hours before our flight, so we grabbed a coffee and found a quiet area until we could proceed through security....which was going smoothly until they thought that our lava salt was a prohibited liquid that we should have disposed of before screening!
Once on the other side, we had some lunch and a beer, did some final shopping (souvenirs and two books - one on Icelandic Sagas, and the other a Nobel-Prize winning piece of Icelandic fiction), and my keen eyes even spotted Nicolaj Coster-Waldau (aka Ser Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones) in the Departures area - he's Danish, so was likely connecting to nearby Copenhagen. We left him alone but did get a photo from afar.
Our mistake was heading to the departure gates early - normally that gets you away from the crowd to a quieter place. At Keflavik, that gets you from a nice large open space with food, washrooms and ample seating, to a very narrow area with no services and no space. In fairness, they are working feverishly to expand the airport, likely to catch up with the rampant demand for Icelandic tourism.
At any rate, we ended up in a small area with four planes all leaving within minutes of each other, and four snaking lines that coalesced into one big mess - you couldn't even tell which line was for your plane! Buses arrived constantly to transport us to the tarmac, to walk up onto our plane - we were near the back in row 37 of a very full 42 row plane, and ended up taking off late, likely due to so many planes being scheduled to take off at roughly the same time.
The flight itself was pretty good, including views of southern Greenland and then the Labrador coast, though we did hit some nasty turbulence over Quebec and eastern Ontario. We were roughly 6 hours flying to Toronto going against the wind, and I managed to watch all of Fellowship of the Ring and most the The Two Towers before we descended into Pearson.
The landing was good.....but then we sat on the tarmac FOREVER. Once off the the plane, Customs was mercifully quick (though a very long walk), hopefully owing to our work the day before to satisfy the ArriveCan app and the CBSA pre-declaration. With no checked bags, we walked out of Terminal 3 and found the Juke in Daily Park, and soon were on our way down the 401 West.
The drive home was cool and smooth - traffic was light, the roads were clear, and our only stop was a quick break in Woodstock for food. We arrived home just before midnight, surprised to be as awake as I was, as my internal clock still thought it was 4am Iceland time (though Jane did nap after London). The cats were VERY happy to see us!
Jane got an email partway home, that she had been "randomly selected" for COVID screening, which meant that we had to get up the next morning and immediately go find a testing facility. C'est la vie.
In the end, we drove the entire Ring Road plus another quarter turn and some side explorations, for some 3000 km in total. We also hiked A LOT, seemingly all uphill, to see some of the greatest natural sights Iceland had to offer. All in all one incredible trip, and we will definitely be back - TAKK FYRIR!
We saw swans everywhere in Iceland - and we finally got some pictures!
Our shuttle bus to the airport
Kingslayer at Keflavik!
Boarding by bus to planes on the Keflavik tarmac
Mountains of southern Greenland
ONE AWESOME TRIP!!!
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