Inadequate reflections on Iceland
It’s been a week and a half since returning from a ten day trip to Iceland – a trip that I’ve been dreaming of since first hearing Björk and realizing that she was (arguably) a real person from a real place on this planet (probably). Normally, when I get back from travel, it’s pretty easy to sit down and come up with some sort of a concise reflection on the journey that just was.
Iceland defies this kind of treatment.
Ostensibly, we (Dusty, Amy and myself) were in the country to take advantage of the wonderful sounds of the Airwaves 2015 festival. We definitely did do this, clocking up between 26 and 28 shows each during the five days of concurrent sets all around Reykjavík. We also managed to get sleep, see the aurora (twice!) and feed ourselves (fish and chips, chocolate bars and hot dogs count, right?) so I consider this a major accomplishment. But this was only one part of the trip.
The rest was seeing some of the country. And, in this regard, we accomplished much and very, very little. With our remaining days on the ground, we covered something like 1000 miles and checked out both guide book recommended and completely unmentioned scenery. It was staggeringly, jaw dropping-ly, bewilderingly and beguilingly beautiful.
And only a small portion of what we completely missed on this trip.
I want to go back again in winter. I want to visit in spring, summer and fall. I want to go east, north, west and again to the south. In short, ten days was both overwhelmingly long and wildly too short a time in Iceland.
And you should visit, too.
More photos, as always, on Flickr. There’s also a boatload of concert footage on Facebook.