In The Airport
I must admit that I’m not a fan of budget airlines. Although Luton airport was fine, the line through security, As always, is rather undignified and more akin to what I imagine could be a factory chicken laying eggs. In this case, the eggs are the trays that you feed down the conveyor belt. It felt more like a battery farm than anything else.
The airport itself had things to do. Contrary to what we’d been told, there were shops, restaurants and cafés. We walked down to gate 15 to meet our plane, where the illusion of a pleasant airport finally ended. The departure gate, if you can call it that, resembled more of a large shed. There were no seats; you just had to stand in a long queue. Although we were there in good time, we were at the back of the line, so it was even more uncomfortable. The plane didn’t have enough room for everyone’s hand luggage, so they decided to take a some from us and put it in the plane hold, which was annoying – although we had been warned of this in advance.
In Flight
The flight itself was uneventful. We were on an Airbus A320-Neo, which felt was fantastic. Definitely quieter than any of the other small aircraft I’ve been on. Congratulations EasyJet on investing in such a fantastic aircraft.
Food on board
We were super hungry on the flight but had managed to stock up at Marks & Spencer with pastries, sandwiches and wraps en route to the airport. Ramani even got me a Bakewell Tart. They used to be 70p when I came here last, but they are £1 now. I must admit that it is £1 pound of pure happiness, and if any of you ever come to the UK then I highly, highly recommend getting a Bakewell tart from Marks & Spencer’s food hall.
Final Approach
The 3-hour flight passed fairly quickly and it wasn’t long before the descent to Iceland began. The approach to Iceland is truly spectacular. You fly over what looks like a great big expanse of land except that it is covered in snow and looks amazing from the air. You can see that it isn’t a glacier because of rocky outcrops and so on, but that only serves to magnify its beauty. The plane circled a few times to line up with the runway, presumably because of air traffic control, although I didn’t really see much other action in the way of aircraft movement. I thought the landing would be more precarious than it was, given that there was no visibly clear land at all. I imagined an ice sheet of the runway with the plane touching down and skidding all over the place! But that did not happen. We braked to slow down rather than using reverse thrust from the engine, which must mean that the runway was in good form. The airport itself looked very pleasant.
In Iceland
A bit of a pain to queue and get through customs control, as only one human being was examining passports. Given that most of our group are children, we could not use the E gates (which looked like the fanciest gates I’ve seen at any airport in the world). We collected our luggage, bought a bottle of Baileys from the duty-free point and ventured into the main airport. Sadly, our hire car pickup place was not in the terminal building, and we had to rely on a shuttle bus to take us there. All this meant being outside.
This is where the romanticism ended. It was about 6pm; it was getting dark, and was bitterly cold. I don’t want to over exaggerate how cold it was, but there was a small breeze and it was colder than I have experienced in many years. The shuttle bus to the car rental station only came every 15 minutes, which was a real nuisance, as keeping three excited children and two older grandparents in line was not easy. Standing around after having been in a warm aircraft and terminal building for so long was hardly pleasant. Not least that we appear to be at the back of the line.
The shuttle bus eventually arrived but stopped nowhere near where we were queueing. So we had to drag our suitcases, children and grandmas all the way to it. As it was there nearly wasn’t room but everyone managed to squish up inside, and we got transported onwards.
We used Thrifty car hire. Didn’t think much of the service there. Although they had the exact car that we reserved, it was blatantly too small for the three suitcases and five pieces of hand luggage. Sadly, there was no other option when it came to rental vehicles, and so we had to find a way which we did eventually. Disappointingly, they knew nothing about baby car seats or how to fix them.
Driving in Iceland means travelling on the right-hand side of the road. It was dark, cold and so this was hardly a pleasant introduction to this nation’s roads. I had to admit that tiredness got the better of me and we swapped drivers after a little while. We wanted to look for a supermarket, but we were also torn with the idea of getting to the hotel and settling down.
In the end, the hotel one and we journeyed off onto the main roads towards Reykjavík. There was snow all around us, but the roads seemed generally clear, and we drove in the dark, but without incident to the hotel, which was exactly as it was described to us. The rooms were pleasant, very reminiscent of IKEA, which is where all the furniture appears to be from. We settled down for the night. The kids can’t wait for tomorrow. They snow everywhere, and promises of snowballs and snow angels are being made, and they will probably be determined to hold us to keep those promises.
So far, we feel lucky to be here. The journey has not been easy. On reflection, I don’t know if those afternoon flights are better than early morning or not. Perhaps there is no “better”. It is what it is. Either way, hello Iceland.