Well to begin with, Ninety, you know damn well that 35,000 feet is where the airframe belongs. And planes are huge these days, you can get up and walk around them and feel teh airframe happy to be up there. Besides, it’s barely eight hours from MEM to Amsterdam. That ain’t a long flight. You try sitting in an MD-11 for sixteen and a half hours over the Pacific sometime. That’s long.
Now, I had my reservations about the ship trip too, but the ship was very comfortable, the room was big, the hall was big, and there were lots of really big places to go running (and shopping and drinking and gambling) and so on. I wasn’t the least bit claustrophobic. Ship companies also have put hand sanitizer dispensers positively all over the place so that everybody doesn’t come down with the duke-n-puke.
So you really ought to go. Or come with us to China next time. That’d be a hoot.
I usually spent almost my entire summer break there when I was a kid-- from mid-June to mid-August. I think the first “big” trip we did to Iceland that I can recall was when I was eight; since we had the whole family there for a couple of weeks during that time, we went out to one of the glaciers (probably Langjökull or Mýrdalsjökull), saw Geysir, hopped down to the Westman Islands, visited some relatives in Ísafjörður, saw Gullfoss, Selfoss, and stayed at a family friend´s cabin in Þingvellir.
The other summers that I visited, I didn’t do as much of the touristy stuff; I did a lot of hopping from one uncle’s house to another uncle’s house to my grandfather’s house and back, and visited the public pools and wandered about Reykjavík. I do miss summers there quite a bit; I got spoiled by spending 3+ summers in someplace that doesn’t heat up like a frying pan and most places are walkable and the food is good. I have no clue what we’ll start with when my fiancé comes with me to Iceland to meet my mother’s side, but I’m sure it’ll be fun.
And here I was thinking the “summerlong trip” was some sort of tour that I’d never heard off :smack:
So I’ll just let everyone else know (like you already do) that it’s beautiful here! And probably the cheapest ever… considering how much the ISK has fallen (chart here )
Well, my lovely wife certainly isn’t a secret (at least not anymore, now that you’ve let the cat out of the bag)!
[del]If you’re really curious about how I got over my fear of flying, have a go at this old thread (although I recognize your fears and mine may not be the same)[/del]. Apparently, my thread about fear of flying no longer exists, which kills me because it went so well. Gah! (Does anyone know if there’s anything I can do to find a thread I started back in 2006?)
But please, please do SOMETHING to conquer your fear – you have no idea how liberating it is, after years of crippling terror, to just know that you can now go wherever you feel like.
While I never think of Iceland as part of Europe (I guess it’s sort of “neither fish nor fowl” to most people) it seems to be a sort of fnord of fiords in that suddenly it gets a lot of press. It’s begun turning up in articles by the score on everything from tourism to alternative energies (in which they seem to be a leader) to archaeology journals. I don’t know if they’re intentionally going higher profile (PR folks et al) but they seem to be coming out.
Iceland has pretty much stepped from the bottom 10 to the top 10 in (W)Europe (economically wise) over the last 30 or so years. And the industry has gotten more and more diverse… from basically only fishing to everything from Aluminum Smelters to Tourism and IT, banking and so on.
So the reasons are most likely - more focus on tourism, more money to spend on PR and diverse sectors that are more fun to write about than fish.
I want to go to Europe. Especially England…and Slovakia, where my family’s from. There’s a lot of Europe in between.
I need to find myself a nice gay southern sugar daddy. Someone who will pay for having a sweet young traveling partner (we can pretend we’re Dr Who!) but won’t get all handsy on me…hmm, I wonder if I know anyone like that…?
The “folding money” (i.e. 1000kr and higher, IIRC) has all sorts of historic sights and historical figures on it-- very pretty, IMO, with lots of colors and linework. example 1 (5000kr- back)) example 2 (5000kr- front)
