Why Iceland?

When we booked our summer family vacation to Iceland for August 2016,  snow and ice were part of the setting outside of our own windows in Waterloo, Ontario. The lights from our Christmas tree cast a warm glow from the family room where we’d just celebrated with the opening of gifts a few days previously, and M and I sat at the computer debating where we wanted to go eight months from then. Sometimes the world’s canvas is simply too large, particularly when you’d happily cover it all before your time of holding an earthly paintbrush comes to an end. We did have some parameters to put in place though, which helped narrow things down: we were, indeed, planning for a family trip, so we were choosing a destination where we felt comfortable taking our eleven- and seven-year-old daughters, H and E. Children, I know, are very portable, and I myself grew up traveling a great deal. My husband, however, did not, and his comfort levels when it comes to travel vary greatly in comparison to my own. I lovingly joke that M’s first instinct when presented with a destination is to type into Google: “How likely am I to die in {insert destination name}?”, but I’m actually not stretching the truth that far (he has very literally typed that query), and you too might think twice about travel if you approach it in this manner. And while I’m normally uber-excited about the prospect of wandering down dark, twisty alleyways to explore what might be around the bend, with the girls in tow I figured my danger radar might just be set several notches higher than usual. We also knew that we were looking at a time frame of approximately two weeks, a feasible amount of vacation time for M to take from his job, and what we hoped would be long enough to get a good feel for a place while not so long that we’d be ready to eat our young before the trip’s end.

And so with the Canadian winter winds blowing around our house, we spent numerous evenings poring over websites once our girls were tucked in and asleep. Ireland and Scotland were high on M’s list, owing to his heritage and, I’m quite certain, his comfort at the thought that English is the native language spoken there. I was leaning towards a Scandinavian vacation, a part of Europe that I’ve never been to and which I thought would provide the option to perhaps visit several countries and settings while also providing the safety we were prioritizing. It was during our travel searches for each of these options that we stumbled upon Iceland as a potential destination, one which we’d truly never considered before. We found that Iceland is a common stop-over during many possible flight patterns to these countries and many others, and so we began investigating this northern country and all it has to offer. We soon discovered that list to be incredibly lengthy.

Reading other travellers’ blogs and a variety of Icelandic travel information, watching posted videos and perusing countless online photo galleries, we found ourselves gushing over the natural beauty of the scenes that the computer screen in front of us was giving us a glimpse into. Otherworldly was the word that kept coming to my mind as we viewed these landscapes appearing before us. And that is how we decided on Iceland, and proceeded to plot out a basic itinerary so that we could get a sense for how long we wanted to be there and where we wanted to stay. While many exploring Iceland choose to travel the country’s entire perimeter by journeying along the Ring Road, a 1 332 km. road that Wikipedia states “runs around the island and connects most of the inhabited parts of the country”, we decided that, while we would certainly need a vehicle for all of the exploring that we intended to do, we did not want to create an itinerary that saw us constantly loading the kids into and out of a car. Our girls have proven to be very good little travellers during previous trips, but the potential for backseat bickering and for a Griswold-like vacation of being vehicle-bound too much of the time did not appeal. Perhaps if we were twenty-somethings again and ready to camp our way around this island bound by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Greenland Sea we would tackle this journey, but we instead designed a trip that we felt enabled us to cover a variety of the country’s landscape while confining ourselves to a smaller section of its geography. Of course, plans designed on evenings in late December and early January do not always hold up on August days an ocean away.

Tallying up the various sights that we were set on seeing, and adding a couple of days to buffer the trip as we did not want to find ourselves wishing for that one more critical day once there, we searched for flights that were as economical as possible. I was set on having our flights and lodging booked before the end of the Christmas holidays, as I know full well what January brings each year. In addition to my own stressful schedule of report card writing as a teacher, January brings with it summer planning as a Mom. This strikes me as ridiculous each year, yet nevertheless, so it goes. The beginning of the new calendar year means booking summer camp experiences for children, and in our fortunate circle, also a variety of cottage invitations from dear friends. The pages of the calendar for the months of July and August become very quickly filled, and if camp registration dates catch you unaware, yours will be the child who doesn’t attend the camps of their choice. Of course being a teacher, our family is fortunate in the fact that we do not have to book an entire summer of camps for the purpose of childcare, but we still tend to give our girls a few camp experiences each summer. This affords them the chance to engage in interesting and often educational opportunities, sometimes with a group of friends and sometimes as an opportunity to meet new people, and also provides me with a week or two each summer to enjoy some more adult-directed activities, and also to participate in professional development opportunities and to get into the classroom to set up and prepare for the coming year’s back to school start-up. This year, of course, I did not require the time for that last purpose. Setting a goal of having the trip’s basic skeleton planned by the end of the winter break also gave us a good target and kept us on track with the planning which, to be honest, became tedious at times. 

Don’t get me wrong, travel planning is a huge part of the experience, and one which I most often enjoy, the anticipation building as the plans take shape. However, poring over countless flight options, lodging types and locales, and trying to imagine our family happily living out the plans we were making independently on a screen in our kitchen many months from that moment became laborious and somewhat nerve-wracking at times. Eventually you just have to take a leap of faith and believe that all of the research and investigation that you’ve done is going to yield positive results, and the button must be pushed. And so, in this vein of trust that we had done all of the necessary prep, we booked four seats on a WOW Air flight to Iceland at the end of the first week of August, and four seats returning us to our beloved Canada eleven days later. WOW Air, you might be thinking, sounds like a completely fictitious air carrier, as did we. As only one of two airlines that we could find which fly directly to Iceland from Canada, the other being ‘Icelandair’ which we couldn’t help but feel sounds more reputable, we found the no frills WOW Air flights’ reasonable prices too tempting to resist. Believe me when I say we were fully prepared to be under-WOWed!

WOW Air delivered in every way!

Eight months is a long time to anticipate a trip in my opinion. Most of our previous travel experiences have been booked with a much shorter time frame between reservation and departure dates. This much time left me feeling at times that the trip would never come, like a child anticipating a birthday. As our departure date neared, I also felt that I’d forgotten so much of the original research that we’d done on those winter evenings, exciting but utterly confounding Icelandic place names all blurring together. I was certainly grateful for the notes and vague itinerary I’d jotted down as we tried to guesstimate how much time we’d need for the trip, and this continued to serve as a skeletal map for our vacation, but a slight unease did set in as I began to feel the pressure of being responsible for my family’s enjoyment during the trip. This unease loitered like a smoker outside of a building in the winter as suitcases were pulled out and I pored over mental and literal checklists, ensuring we had the clothing, shoes, snacks and paperwork necessary. Parents, and though I don’t mean to stereotype, many Moms in particular, will likely be able to relate. The burden of responsibility that I felt as I checked and rechecked these lists mentally became completely stressful at times. Did we have the proper footwear for hiking and for rocky swimming experiences? The climate in Iceland in August differs from the hot, humid summer we were experiencing in South-Western Ontario, Reykjavik posting what we would view as more autumn-like temperatures, and we’d read about the likelihood of the coastal climate bringing winds and rain which could further change the feel of things. So did everyone have a good variety of warm, water-resistant outerwear, with the possibility for layering underneath? And snacks? Not only for the flight, during which we knew we were not going to be WOWed with even a small packet of pretzels, but also for our nearly two weeks of excursions once in Iceland. We knew that, generally speaking, the country was an expensive one, and so packing a variety of granola bars, applesauce packs, trail mixes and crackers would be beneficial. Eventually I had to shake myself out of this anxiety-inducing mentality, reminding myself that we would, in all likelihood, survive no matter if I did forget something, and that we could surely fill any wardrobe gaps once there if truly necessary. My obsessive compulsive tendencies fought valiantly as I tucked away the lists and took many calming breaths, but enough is sometimes truly enough.

And so the date of departure arrived, with my dear Dad seeing us off at the Toronto airport. There’s always a movie-like quality to these scenes in my mind, when a loved one either drops you off or picks you up at an airport or train station. Seeing my girls leap to their Grampa with huge goodbye hugs added to the already happy tone of our impending adventure. The next few hours flew by in a wave of airport protocol, games of cards on the waiting lounge floor, and last-minute washroom stops before boarding our plane. And then WOWAir took over and flew us without incident, safely and soundly, to the Keflavik International Airport in Iceland. This no-frills airline delivered! The flight had been an overnight affair, planned thus so that we could capitalize on a full day upon arrival, and though sleeping in planes rarely provides the most restful of sleeps, we managed to catch a few Zzzzs and deplaned eager and ready to explore. The relatively brief five-hour flight was yet one more positive check on our list for why we'd chosen Iceland for this family vacation. 

Cuties catching some winks during our over-night flight to Iceland.

Stay tuned for a look at our ten-day itinerary while exploring Iceland!

My wonder: Do you enjoy the process of planning and preparing for a trip? What is the longest window of time that you've ever had to wait between the booking of a trip and the actual departure?