Will Iceland Exhaust Me?

(image taken from the web)

My airline reservations on Icelandair have been made for my trip to Europe in August.  I will spend two nights in Reykjavik, Iceland, before continuing on to Switzerland, and I have reserved an Airbnb apartment.  Besides taking advantage of the new direct flights from Cleveland to Iceland, and having the opportunity to see a bit of a new country, I thought that one of the benefits of this itinerary would be to cut down on jet lag by dividing up the journey across the Atlantic.  Now, I am starting to think that I will arrive in Switzerland even more exhausted.

The flight from Cleveland leaves in the evening and arrives in Iceland's Keflavik Airport at 6:30 A.M. (2:30 A.M. Cleveland time).   I am one of those people who simply cannot sleep on an airplane.  I can fall asleep on a bus or a train or in a car, but never on a plane.  So I will arrive at my destination after a short, sleepless night.  The journey from the airport to the capital city of Reykjavik is a fifty minute bus ride (perhaps a chance for a nap, although I will more likely be too eager to observe the passing landscape to nod off).  I suppose that it will be about 8:00 A.M. when I arrive at Reykjavik's main bus station.  Check-in for my Airbnb apartment is not until 2:00 P.M.  I sent a message to the owner of the apartment, and she said that I could drop off my luggage at her place.  It is about a 20 minute walk from the bus station to the apartment.  Looking at Google Maps is appears to be a pleasant walk passing through one of the city's public parks.  I can handle that... IF it's not raining.  I could splurge and take an ultra-expensive taxi, but, according to my guide book, you have call to and reserve a taxi.  They are not lined up outside the bus station.  

So after I drop off my luggage with the owner, I then have about five hours to wander around Reykjavik until check-in, and hopefully it won't be RAINING.  After I have checked into my apartment, the temptation will be to take a nap.  However, my strategy for combatting jet-lag is to never give in to the desire to nap, but to force myself to get used to the new time zone.  I could do some more exploration of the city, or, if it is raining I could just stay inside and work on my blog.  By 9:00 P.M. (when it is still very much daylight outside) I will allow myself to succumb to the arms of Morpheus. 

My next day in Iceland I will book one of the popular "Golden Circle" tours which take in some of the sights of natural beauty on the island.  Those last between six and eight hours, so it will be a full day. (Fingers crossed that it is not raining.  If I seem obsessed with rain, it is because I suspect that the climate will be similar to the northern, maritime climate of Bergen, Norway.  On my visit to that city, sunshine was a very rare commodity.) 

In spite of the long hours of daylight, I will once again have to turn in early.  The next day, my flight to Zurich leaves at 7:30 A.M.  That means that I need to be at the airport at 5:30 A.M. … which means that I will have to take the 4:30 A.M. bus... which means that I will have to get up by 3:30 A.M.!

I will probably be a very weary traveler by the time I reach Zurich at I:00 in that afternoon!