Hey Everyone,
Despite some significant and unexpected adventuring, we've made it to Iceland and have settled into our room nicely (as the first one all week to have a private bathroom, I have dubbed it my favorite). Most of the adventuring happened yesterday, so we'll start there.
Figuring that since our flight departed from Heathrow at 1:00, we wouldn't have much time to do anything in London yesterday morning, we took it easy and planned to leave the hostel around 10:00 am. This happened. So far, so good. We got to the Tube station and were able to transfer to the appropriate line. Still going well. Then we hear an emergency announcement essentially stating that a person had gone under a train, and to expect delays. Well, that was bad. Mostly for the person under the train. When we were able to move past the station where it had happened, we pretty quickly ran into a delay caused by a signal malfunction. All in all, the trip that should have taken us 50 minutes took us almost two hours.
We were able to check in and get to our gate, located in random no-mans-land, Heathrow, with a solid 8 minutes to spare. Oh well, no lunch for us. Fast forward through the entirely uneventful flight, to luggage pick-up. When all was said and done, we had two bags... instead of three. The bag that Becky had ended up checking (containing important things, like her laptop, toiletries, and camera) was missing. It hadn't made the flight. Luckily (and unfortunately), we were not the only ones in this predicament, and Iceland Air assured us that the bag would be on a later flight, and would be delivered ASAP. Inconvenient, but probably the best possible outcome at that point.
So, Becky and I made our way to the Flybus, which took us back to our hostel/apartment room. There was a brief moment where it looked like someone had taken my bag by mistake, but that was quickly resolved. From there, we actually had a pretty relaxing evening. By the time we were settled, we were both pretty famished, so we descended on the first restaurant we stumbled across (a pizza place... not really traditional Icelandic, but it needed to happen). After dinner, we stocked up at a grocery store and came back and read for a while, after which we both crashed pretty hard.
This morning, our slightly slow start was rewarded, as Becky's bag was delivered with all contents present and accounted for. Definitely awesome, as losing luggage has a way of putting an unfortunate stain on a trip. For the morning, we did a walk around Reykjavik, trying to figure out what was actually open at the end of September. We were able to find a fair amount of shops, and Icelandic monuments to explore, so despite the fairly constant 20 mph winds, we had a pretty great time. We stopped in to a place advertising great Icelandic Meat Soup for lunch, had the meat soup, and were forced to agree with the "great" assessment.
Now we're back at the hostel for a bit, and pretty soon we're going to go catch the bus to the Blue Lagoon Geothermal Spa (!!!).
Yay!
Despite some significant and unexpected adventuring, we've made it to Iceland and have settled into our room nicely (as the first one all week to have a private bathroom, I have dubbed it my favorite). Most of the adventuring happened yesterday, so we'll start there.
Figuring that since our flight departed from Heathrow at 1:00, we wouldn't have much time to do anything in London yesterday morning, we took it easy and planned to leave the hostel around 10:00 am. This happened. So far, so good. We got to the Tube station and were able to transfer to the appropriate line. Still going well. Then we hear an emergency announcement essentially stating that a person had gone under a train, and to expect delays. Well, that was bad. Mostly for the person under the train. When we were able to move past the station where it had happened, we pretty quickly ran into a delay caused by a signal malfunction. All in all, the trip that should have taken us 50 minutes took us almost two hours.
We were able to check in and get to our gate, located in random no-mans-land, Heathrow, with a solid 8 minutes to spare. Oh well, no lunch for us. Fast forward through the entirely uneventful flight, to luggage pick-up. When all was said and done, we had two bags... instead of three. The bag that Becky had ended up checking (containing important things, like her laptop, toiletries, and camera) was missing. It hadn't made the flight. Luckily (and unfortunately), we were not the only ones in this predicament, and Iceland Air assured us that the bag would be on a later flight, and would be delivered ASAP. Inconvenient, but probably the best possible outcome at that point.
So, Becky and I made our way to the Flybus, which took us back to our hostel/apartment room. There was a brief moment where it looked like someone had taken my bag by mistake, but that was quickly resolved. From there, we actually had a pretty relaxing evening. By the time we were settled, we were both pretty famished, so we descended on the first restaurant we stumbled across (a pizza place... not really traditional Icelandic, but it needed to happen). After dinner, we stocked up at a grocery store and came back and read for a while, after which we both crashed pretty hard.
This morning, our slightly slow start was rewarded, as Becky's bag was delivered with all contents present and accounted for. Definitely awesome, as losing luggage has a way of putting an unfortunate stain on a trip. For the morning, we did a walk around Reykjavik, trying to figure out what was actually open at the end of September. We were able to find a fair amount of shops, and Icelandic monuments to explore, so despite the fairly constant 20 mph winds, we had a pretty great time. We stopped in to a place advertising great Icelandic Meat Soup for lunch, had the meat soup, and were forced to agree with the "great" assessment.
Now we're back at the hostel for a bit, and pretty soon we're going to go catch the bus to the Blue Lagoon Geothermal Spa (!!!).
Yay!
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