Virginia:

Oh, where to begin? The flight was anything but relaxing, complete with crying children, narrow seats that would not recline, and a row of loud guys sitting behind us. For the first couple of hours we watched the ground beneath us darken and become dotted with yellow, white, and orange lights in increasing splotches. The captain announced that we were passing New York City, and we saw Ground Zero and Times Square. Once we had passed NYC, we tried to sleep. Matt got a few hours in. I finished a novel. That should sum up how successful the sleeping plan was. By the way, read Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson--very chilling (no pun intended).

We arrived in Keflavik very, very early--6:10am. That was, unfortunately, only 1:10am in Cookeville. We were somewhat disoriented as we claimed our baggage and found our Flybus to shuttle us to Reykjavik, where we knew a room would not be waiting. The bus ride was a bit of a blur, as tired as we were; however, the odd beauty of the land helped keep us awake. The fields are black lava-rocks, only a few tufts of stubborn, pale yellow grass trying to survive. Snow-capped mountains line the freezing water and create a boundary around Reykjavik.

Arriving at Fosshotel Baron, we were not optimistic. It was 8 hours before check-in time. We asked (very nicely) if a room was ready yet, willing to pay a prorated fee for the day. The clerk told us that only ocean-view rooms were ready, and it would be an extra 3000 Krona a night--roughly $30. We bugrudgingly left our luggage in storage and decided to kill some time wandering the streets of Reykjavik, now in a zombie-like state of exhaustion. Showerless and hungry, we set off toward Laugavegur--the shopping district.

Nothing was open so early in the morning, aside from bakeries and coffee shops. We settled on a snack from a 24-hour market: Icelandic yogurt and a Coke Zero. We marveled at the Coke selection here: Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Coke Light (something like 4 calories...very tasty), and regular Coke. We ate while we passed through a somewhat sketchy part of town dotted with gentlemen's clubs and lacy outfits hanging in windows. It did not take long to find the street we wanted, though.

Matt:

We found the tourist center and cashed in our voucher for our tourist cards, which allowed us to ride on the buses and admit us to the museums for free. We used a small cafe-style table to study brochures and give ourselves a better sense of where we actually were in the city, and then we set off into the streets. We decided to museum hop in an effort to kill a few hours, long enough at least for some of the restaurants to open for lunch. Within a span of a few hours, we visited 871 +/-2 (The Settlement Exhibition and site of the oldest relics of human habitation in Reykjavik), the Reykjavik Museum of Photography (located on the top floor of the city library), and Hafnarhus (the Harbour House aka Reykjavik Art Museum).

After broadening our cultural horizons, we set out to find lunch near the docks, along the westernmost edge of the city. Virginia remembered reading about a restaurant here, and we found it: Sjarvarbarrin ("the Sea Bar"), home of an enormous seafood buffet. The place was run by a Polish man who pointed to large pictures of fish on the wall as he described the dishes on the buffet. Only the cod was familiar, but it was fried perfectly.

Full but still tired, we explored the docks and ventured back into the city streets, curiously entering every store that caught our eye on Laugavegar (which, by the way, was listed as #3 in a list of the world's greatest shopping districts according to a book we'd found in Florida) until we were back to Baronstigur, where our hotel resides. By now it was time to check-in, and the man behind the counter asked if we were taking the Northern Lights tour. "No," we said. 15 minutes later, after throwing our stuff in the room, we were back at the counter, asking where we sign up.

A short nap and Domino's Pizza later, we were ready for the tour. While waiting for the tour, we met several of the other people in our hotel waiting for the bus, almost all of whom were American. In fact, there was a woman with her two sons from Athens, Tennessee. That's right, while in Iceland we met people who live less than two hours from us back home. There was also a woman from New Haven, Connecticut, who had visited Crossville and loves Tennessee. With a small assortment of non-Americans, we boarded our bus and met our tour guide, Bob. Bob was from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and first visited Iceland in the early 70s with the US Air Force. He fell completely in love with the country and did his best to stay there, when the country was still rather closed off. In the early 90s, he got a call offering him a job as a tour guide, and he took it without hesitation.

It was just after 9pm GMT when our bus set out, an hour or so before the ideal time for the Northern Lights to appear, but as luck would have it, just after we left the cities of Reykjavik and Hafnarfjordur behind, the first signs of light in the sky began to appear. They were never bright and colorful, but there were distinctly lights moving, weaving across the night sky. And they were beautiful. I've never seen anything like them before, and I may never again, but I am happy that we were able to see them, since they aren't always around. But Bob was more of a hunter than a tour guide, and he wasn't quite satisfied with what we'd seen, so we hopped back on the bus and drove to the other side of Reykjavik, toward Thingvellir, the park where the tectonic plates of North America and Europe meet.

Two stops and half an hour later, we found them again in the Thingvellir parking lot, never strong or intense, but Northern Lights just the same. Unfortunately, large cloud banks were moving into the area, clogging up the night sky. But in those brief moments of absolutely clarity, one could look up and stare into the sky for hours. I've never seen so many stars before in my life.

By the time we made it back to the hotel (around 1am GMT), the bus was full of exhausted people. We stumbled to the stairs and elevators like walking dead, and Virginia and I, at least, felt that it was worth every burst of cold and every moment that we could have spent asleep in our bed. We saw things many people will never see in their entire lives, and I was able to mark another item off my list of things to do and see before I die. Northern Lights, check.

Our first day in Iceland was over. Already, it felt like we'd been there for a week. We settled in our bed and quickly fell asleep in the land of the Vikings, in the land of fire and ice.