A second night in the airport! This is Keflavik at 1 AM before we caught our flight to Copenhagen, then finally on to Paris.

In front of a bus stop in Keflavik, Iceland.

Looking out at the sea and mountains - Keflavik.

A maritime monument in Keflavik.

Whew! We finally made it to Paris and have already enjoyed our first Metro rides, a bike trip to Versailles, food shopping, baguettes, butter and the joys of jet lag. Our trip to Paris took much longer than expected because our flight out of Seattle was delayed by 4 hours. We knew taking off that we might not make our connection in Iceland, but there was still hope the plane from Iceland to Paris might wait for us because so many of our passengers were continuing on. That was not to be however and when we landed in Iceland we waited in a couple of long lines to determine our fate. Iceland Air did a great job taking care of us and gave us a new plan for reaching Paris. We had to spend the day in Iceland so they gave us transportation to and from the airport to a hotel, vouchers for a couple of meals and a day room at a small hotel in Keflavik, Iceland. We arrived there about noon and had a nice lunch in the dining room of the hotel. We had two hotel rooms for the day so we got to nap a bit and even shower before returning to the airport at 11 PM to catch a 1 AM flight to Copenhagen and then from there on to Paris. Our 1 AM flight was also delayed (seemed to be a repeating theme!), but only by 1 hour and we were able to make our connection to Paris. We arrived in Paris about 11 AM and after a bit of waiting for our reserved van and driver to pick us up, made our way to our new home for the month. More on that a bit later…

Because we have a whole month to enjoy Paris, we counted our day trip to Iceland as a bonus. We got to enjoy the day in the small city of Keflavik and truly enjoyed walking around. I was able to contact our apartment owner and the van service in Paris that we would not be arriving at the predicted time. I got e-mail replies back that they had our new times, se we were really able to just relax and enjoy our unexpected time. We walked around all of downtown Keflavik in an hour or two, got to hear a lot of Icelandic being spoken by kids in the street and we also enjoyed a walk along the sea wall. The landscape looks like country that is used to cold weather. The sea shore was mostly big, dark walls of volcanic rock, the soil looked quite thin with lots of volcanic rock sticking up in places and there were very few (if any!) big trees or scrub bushes. The houses and buildings had steeply pitched roofs and we were glad we had our jackets with us. Our thin jackets were almost adequate for our walk but the wind made it a little chilly. We visited a grocery store and saw lots of different kinds of dried fish, canned fish, fresh fish, frozen fish and of course managed to find a very yummy chocolate dessert ( we did NOT try the fish in any of its forms!). The few interactions we had with the people were very pleasant and almost everyone we ran in to spoke some level of English. We even got an Icelandic stamp in our passport, so once again, we considered ourselves rather lucky for the unexpected and all expenses-paid day trip to Iceland.

It was difficult spending a second full night on the plane however. We were some of the lucky few who got bumped into business class for the 3 hour flight from Iceland to Copenhagen and we all managed to get a bit of sleep on that flight. We spent a couple of uneventful hours in the Copenhagen airport and then boarded our final flight to Paris – it was a relief to know our journey would finally be ending. Our bags (all 8 of them!) were some of the first off the plane but our driver was not waiting for us when we got off the plane. I was a bit daunted at the prospect of having to try and find a phone, use an international card, etc. to contact the van service. I was considering just asking someone to borrow a cell phone because EVERYONE seemed to be very well connected. I found an information desk however, and they made the call for me and told us our driver would be there in 10 minutes – which he was! The trip into the city was uneventful other than the driver told me my French was good (wow, that was a switch from when I was here 27 years ago when my French was good but no one else seemed to think so!). The climb up the 4 (make that 5) narrow flights of stairs by 5 very tired people with 8 very heavy suitcases was not very fun. We did make it though, found the friend of the owner waiting for us, received a quick overview of the apartment and now here we are, a day later than planned but with an Icelandic passport stamp and experience to add to our travels!

Our first mission was to find some food – which we did – buy some metro tickets – which we did – and of course eat some baguettes and butter – which we also did! I think all of those experiences will be repeated many times over in the next month.

Our next post will be about our day trip (on bikes!) to Versailles. A bientot.

Terri