A Trip
Whew! There’s been very little blogging activity in ThimbleannaLand — to include not reading your blogs and commenting. I do have a good excuse though, and I hope you can forgive me. If you follow me on Instagram, you know that we’ve had a fun little get-away.
Several months ago, we decided that we wanted to go somewhere to celebrate TheFirstChild’s graduation. During the weeks of conversation, TheFirstChild suggested Iceland.
Iceland?
Hmm, we hadn’t really given it much thought. (And happily, my first reaction wasn’t the same thing that we heard from most people — “Iceland? Why would you want to go to Iceland?) As I started to research a trip, I wondered if maybe TheFirstChild chose this location for ME— for two reasons — 1) Puffins, and 2) YARN!!! (Naturally, I kept this little yarn insight to myself — I didn’t want to scare the rest of the family away!) So, while you were happily reading quilt market reports across blogland, we were winging our way to the Land of Fire and Ice.
The hardest part about a trip to Iceland is getting there. There are limited flights into Reykjavik. We connected from Chicago through Toronto, and unbeknownst to me when I booked our flights, Toronto only has one flight into Reykjavik every other day. So, when our American flight from Chicago was two hours late, we missed our window to get to Iceland on time. Shortly after we landed and collected luggage for customs, they told us to hop on a shuttle and hustle over to the Air Canada terminal to catch a flight to London where we would connect to Reykjavik the next morning. Fine. We hustled.
When we got there, we were told that we were 5 minutes late (still 55 minutes before flight time) and couldn’t be checked in for the flight. We argued with Ms.PeaBrain and Ms.PeaBrainSupervisor for twenty minutes — until it really was too late to check us in. Even better, Ms.PeaBrain and her supervisor offered us no help or suggestions, except to suggest that we get back on the shuttle and go back over to the American terminal. So we did. And by now we were too late for any other options that night. The next best chance was to fly, on Air Canada again, to Frankfurt Germany, the next night. We made our reservations for the following night and went to a hotel around 1 a.m.
So, we lost 24 hours and played a lot of cards in Toronto. I was pretty darn upset at all the planned things that we were going to miss in Reykjavik — most notably, meeting an Icelandic blogger (more on that later).
The next day, while hanging around, TheFirstChild suggested that we extend our trip by a day (to try to make up for the two days that we lost), so we went back to the American counter and met the bright shining star of the whole fiasco — an American agent who gladly changed our return flights. Then, we got back on the shuttle (by now we were becoming fast friends with the shuttle) and arrived at the Air Canada terminal to check in four hours before our flight. And guess what Mr. AirCanada had to say? “There’s no way you guys are getting on this flight. It’s oversold by about 25 seats and we have to honor our Air Canada customers first.”
WHAT??? I looked over at SweetiePie, and this is what I saw:
Yep — THE Vanessa look for panic at the airport. We all looked like that. And, once again, Mr.AirCanada was NO help for options. If you are sensitive, avert your eyes.
Air Canada… YOU. SUCK.
Sorry and Thank You. That felt better. We were definitely NOT going to spend ANOTHER night in Toronto, so we hopped on the shuttle and went back to Ms.BrightShiningStar at American. She was fantastic and she found us a British Airways flight to London with a connection to Reykjavik the next day. (Which only goes to prove how unhelpful Air Canada was — they could have found the same solution. But then, you have to be a thinker.) We happily boarded the BA flight which went smoothly until an hour before landing at Heathrow. The pilot announced that there’d been a fire on one of the runways and we would be diverted to Stansted. The fun meter was pegged out! Luckily, just 20 minutes before landing, the pilot came back on to tell us that we’d been cleared for Heathrow. Shoot, I was really looking forward to the chaos of trying to figure out ground transportation for a 747 FULL of passengers to get them back to Heathrow. {Sarcasm}
Anyway, 36 hours after the original arrival time, we made it to Reykjavik. And we had a FAAAANTASTIC time. Iceland is amazing! When I was planning the trip, I found several blogs that did day-by-day reports of their trips and they were a great help in my planning. I’m going to do a similar report and post it here on the website. In the meantime, here’s a peek. We saw…
Sheep (all that lopi yarn doesn’t grow on trees)
Gorgeous Icelandic Horses
Whales (and we weren’t even on a whale watching trip!)
PUFFINS! (It took more than one attempt and a lot of driving, but we saw them. I love my little family for putting up with me!)
Fjords
Churches
Glaciers
Waterfalls
Yarn sold in grocery stores
Beaches
And Oh. So. Much. More.
That’s plenty for now, don’t you think? When I come back, I’ll tell you about meeting the most beautiful little Icelandic blogger and shopping with her. Have a good week!
XOXO,
Anna
P.S. In case you don’t know, Sherri is having a blog book tour this week. Be sure and visit each blog for chances to win her wonderful new book!