20260622 Monday, June 22, 2026 - Reykjavik to Whidbey Island

20260622 Monday, June 22, 2026 - Reykjavik to Whidbey Island

As far as return flight schedules go, today’s looked pretty easy.  Our direct flight from Reykjavik to Seattle departed at 12:45pm so we had a hotel pick-up at 9 a.m. scheduled by Viking’s transportation team since we had booked our extension and flights through Viking.  Viking had originally had us scheduled to fly from Reykjavik to either London or Frankfurt and then on to Seattle because the only air carriers with lie-flat business class seats to Seattle had to come out of mainland Europe.  But we discovered that Alaska Airlines had recently begun direct flights from Reykjavik to Seattle since acquiring planes with sufficient range and capacity through their acquisition of Hawaiian Airlines.  The 737-8 Max aircraft had the range but were configured with domestic business class seating which reclines about 15º and has calf rests.  Since this was a daylight flight headed westward, and the flight time was less than 8 hours, we figured we would be better off with the direct flight.  Traveling to London, Frankfurt, or Paris would have added many more hours to our total travel time and gotten us home later.

There was plenty of time to have breakfast and get our teeth brushed before having to head to the airport.  

Iceland Parliament Hotel’s “Over Easy” eggs, not so easy.

Avocado Benedict

The transfer van arrived early, so the hotel front desk rang us on the telephone to let us know.  There were a total of 6 Viking Neptune passengers headed to the airport at the same time and for the same flight. 

 
The Reykjavik International Airport is actually in Keflavik, so its international call sign is KEF.  It is almost an hour’s drive from downtown Reykjavik.  We only encountered light traffic, but the weather had turned for the worse overnight, and it was raining steadily as we headed to the airport.  It was quite the contrast to the beautiful sunny weather we had for our Golden Circle tour yesterday.  It was almost like Iceland was crying because it was sad to see us going home.  

After our airport drop-off, we had to wait about a half hour before we could check our bags.  KEF airport is a bit basic and rudimentary around the boarding gate areas.  These branch off the main hub, which is like a mall department store encouraging travelers to spend more money before they leave Iceland. 

The boarding gate areas are generally too small with inadequate seating, so when a flight gets ready to board, there is severe congestion.  

Our boarding gate wasn’t so much of a boarding gate as a holding area for a shuttle bus, which drove us across a taxiway to our jet, which was parked on the tarmac with cargo planes.  Being the new kid in town, Alaska Airlines obviously drew the short straw on gate assignments.  Alaska Airlines also did not have access to any business class lounges in the airport.

The plane did not have seat-back entertainment screens, but the plane did have free in-flight Wi-Fi so passengers could text and surf on their own devices.  The seat backs did have a USB-C power port that was easily accessible on the seat back as well as a fold-down device holder that could just fit an iPad without a case. There was also 220VAC on the front of the center console.  Having learned from our experience on the outbound Lufthansa flights, we carried an AC power brick and both USB-A and USB-C cables so we could keep our devices charged during the flight.  

This direct Reykjavik to Seattle flight was very interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is that because of our high northern latitude and westward flight path, we will be staying nearly stationary in space as the Earth rotates beneath us and we drift southward.  The plane will be going fast enough to offset the Earth’s rotation, so we will arrive in Seattle about the same time on the clock as when we depart Reykjavik.  The actual flight time is 7-1/2 hours, but we will be crossing 8 time zones as we head westward.

The second interesting thing is the flight path took us over Greenland, Baffin Island, and parts of the Northwestern Passages, including the northern part of Hudson’s Bay during the middle of the daylight.  This provided the opportunity to see some spectacular scenic views of these areas, which had mountains, fjords, glaciers, ice flows, and icebergs.

Iceberg spotted from 38,000 ft altitude, wandering between Iceland and Greenland.

Halfway between Iceland and Greenland, our pilot spotted a huge iceberg in the middle of the north Atlantic.  It was the size of a small mountain, and visible from our 38,000ft altitude.  That’s the sort of ice berg that sunk the Titanic.

We were very fortunate that the cloud cover broke over the eastern coast of Greenland as we crossed, giving us breathtaking views of some of the most amazing glaciers and mountains you can imagine.  

As we flew further inland over Greenland’s massive ice sheet, the clouds closed in, obscuring Greenland until the clouds opened just enough for us to get a glimpse of the western edge of Greenland’s rapidly retreating ice sheet. 

Greenland’s ice sheet is the second-largest ice mass on Earth, covering about 80% of Greenland’s land mass.  That is three times the area of Texas.  It is up to a mile thick and holds 10% of the world’s fresh water.  If it were to melt entirely, sea levels would rise by over 20’. 

To the countless scientists who have been studying and recording data on the ice sheet for hundreds of years, climate change and its potential impacts on life on planet Earth are undeniable.  As much as political demagogues find it expedient to deny science and reality, it is awe-inspiring to actually see the effects on this ice sheet, even from 38,000 ft in the air.

The clouds closed in again, obscuring the western coastline.

The clouds opened up again over central Baffin Island, the second-largest island in the world.  It was a rare opportunity to see both the world’s largest and second-largest islands in a matter of a couple of hours.  The landscapes and sea scapes are absolutely otherworldly.  It is hard to imagine scraping out a living in these areas where the polar bear is the undisputed king of the land and seas.  We didn’t spot any polar bears from our 38,000’ cruising altitude, but there were certainly out there.  

Nettilling Lake, Baffin Island

Duke of York Bay, Southampton Island, Northwest Passages of Hudson’s Bay

Nunavut, Canada

The landscapes across much of Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Northern Saskatchewan and Alberta are wild and covered with millions of lakes and streams, many of which are frozen.  It gave the impression of the surface of a giant saturated sponge.  It wasn’t until we approached Edmonton that the landscapes took on the more solid look that we associate with continental North America.

As we crossed the prairies of southern Alberta and the Canadian Rockies, it began to look a lot like home, particularly when the beautifully symmetric snow-peaked Mt. Baker came into view.  

Mt Baker

Seattle as we headed south over the Bellevue and the Eastside.

We flew south over the Cascade foothills before making a U-turn over Olympia to make our final approach into Seattle-Tacoma Airport.  We had beautiful clear weather with a very smooth ride all the way until we began descending over the Cascade foothills, where it got a little bumpy in the last half hour.  

The new international arrivals terminal at SeaTac is modern and comfortable, as well as efficient.  There is an extremely long escalator both up and then back down over the pedestrian overpass that connects the international arrivals terminal to the main terminal complex that is like a stairway to Heaven, and then back down to Earth.

We pretty much breezed through picking up our luggage and then customs and passport control thanks to Global Entry.  There were huge lines backed up at customs and passport control which we simply bypassed walking past a gauntlet of overhead cameras, and then an agent who visually confirmed we matched the biometric data associated with our Known Traveler profiles through our NEXUS membership, and waved us through.  

We were able to catch an earlier shuttle bus, saving us an hour and a half of waiting.  There was a short but beautiful ferry ride from Mukilteo to Clinton.  There was a whale watching boat and sailboat that were watching a lone whale out in front of Mukilteo’s waterfront to the east.  It was too far from the ferry route to see any more than just the rate but unmistakable spout of a whale breaking surface before diving again.  There were no tail flukes or dorsal fins visible at this distance.  

We were surprised by the summer weather with temperatures in the upper 70’s and clear skies.  It was a bit of a shock coming from Svalbard and Iceland, but a welcome sort of shock.  

When we got home, Ben changed into short sleeves and shorts, and we celebrated our return with Price by making a trip to Dairy Queen.  

This was quite an enjoyable trip.  We did travel previously with Mark and Jan to the Galapagos and with Doug and Sandy to Florida, but this was the first trip that all six of us traveled together on an ocean-going cruise ship.  We all have our different styles and interests, and seeing and sharing those around the dinner tables and activities on the cruise ship adds a whole new dimension to the value of traveling the world with friends. 

This itinerary, which started in Oslo, took the scenic train across inland Norway to Bergen, and then through the inside passages of Norway’s northern coast, then across the Arctic Circle to Svalbard and on to Iceland, features some of the most spectacular scenic cruising of any of our prior travels.  Even though we had previously done a Norway cruise with Princess, the inside routes that Viking was able to take make a shocking difference in the experience.  

While Svalbard and Antarctica had some similarities, both are strikingly unique in their own ways.  We were able to get much farther north (78ºN) in Svalbard than Antarctica (64.8ºS). 

There is much more snow and ice in Antarctica, and the water and climate are also much colder in Antarctica thanks to the warm Gulf Stream’s influence on the North Atlantic.  The massive frozen land mass of the Antarctic continent and lack of warming ocean currents make the Antarctic much colder and harsher than the Arctic.

This makes the Antarctic Circle much harder to access since it is closed off by ice flows and sea ice that are impassible to all but dedicated icebreakers for most of the year, and even polar expedition vessels like the Viking Polaris and Octantis cannot guarantee achieving a crossing of the Antarctic Circle when they attempt to do so on select extended late-season sailings.  

Most Antarctica itineraries concentrate on giving passengers the maximum potential opportunity to see wildlife and go ashore in Antarctica where conditions are more certain.  The sailings that attempt to cross the Antarctic Circle in February or March are sold out until 2029 and these are 14-day itineraries that are about $5000 per person more expensive than the standard 10-day Antarctica cruises. 

The most certain way of getting across the Antarctic Circle and touching land is to fly into Wolf’s Fang Runway at 71ºS on a private charter flight out of South Africa or McMurdo Station at 77.8ºS on a flight out of New Zealand.  For us, it’s something we don’t really have to check off on our bucket lists with so much of the rest of the world to still explore.

We look forward to being home bodies for a while during the beautiful summer months we have at home.  Our next trip will be a Viking River Cruise in Portugal in the fall after the fishing seasons end and rains begin to fall again.  

20260621 Sunday, June 21, 2026 Iceland Golden Circle Tour

20260621 Sunday, June 21, 2026 Iceland Golden Circle Tour

The breakfast at the Iceland Parliament Hotel was a bit chaotic, and at $42 USD per person, it was a little under standard for your typical Viking extension hotel.  There was a reasonable selection of standard breakfast items, but the hot line just had scrambled eggs, baked beans, and sad-looking pork sausage halves.  Instead, there is an entree menu, and diners get to choose one item from that menu.  Those included things like eggs benedict and omelets.  Ben ordered the eggs royal, which is eggs benedict with smoked salmon instead of ham, and Janet ordered a ham and cheese omelet with a side of bacon.  

It was a filling breakfast, but not as good as the ship’s and not as good as many other Viking extension hotel breakfasts.  

Our Golden Circle Guide, Sigga, had walked into the lobby before Ben and Janet came down and did not recognize our group.  She then went around the back lobby entrance, where Doug spotted her, and Ben waved her in.  

Sigga drove a relatively nice black Ford Transit van configured for 9 passengers.  It had comfortable seating, and we were impressed that she had a PA system installed so she could speak through a headset, and the vehicle’s audio system played her narration throughout the van.  As the day and tour played out, the weather was exceptional with sunny skies and only a light breeze.  This meant that the van heated up in the sun while we were touring, and it turned out that her air conditioning was not working, so we ended up having to drive with windows down in the afternoon to keep the interior cool enough for everyone.  This was the first tour of this summer season, so she was not aware of this issue until today.  

Sigga has an interesting background.  She was a flight attendant for several international air carriers in Europe and Africa before pursuing a journalism career, which culminated in her being a news anchor for an Icelandic TV station.  Then she gave birth to twins— a boy and a girl— and found the hours and demands of being a news anchor incompatible with single motherhood.  That led to a stint in media production before a friend asked her if she could help him out by showing some visitors around Iceland.  She found she really enjoyed guiding, and has been doing that for several years now.  

The tour began with heading out of Reykjavik into the suburbs, pointing out landmarks and talking about housing, population dynamics, and growth in Iceland.  Growth has been driven largely by immigration, driven in part by the EU’s open borders policy.  There are significant Polish and Lithuanian populations, and even an Albanian mafioso contingent.  On the whole, it was worked to the benefit of all as the Polish and Lithuanian immigrants do jobs that Icelanders don’t care for, filling a critical labor need, and the Albanian mobsters pretty much stick to killing each other and leaving everyone else alone.  

We drove out past the stables where we had ridden horses yesterday.  The valley has quite a lot of horse infrastructure, and while Sigga didn’t personally ride, a lot of Icelanders do.  

Our first official stop was Kerið crater.  This is a picturesque crater that once was thought to have been formed by an explosive eruption, but the lack of evidence of any associated ashfall has led to a more recent theory of it having been caused by the collapse of the underlying magma chamber towards the end of its eruption, which spilled lava all over the surrounding landscape. 

There is a rim trail that takes about 20 minutes to walk around, and a trail down into the crater to a lake at the bottom.  Ben, Doug, and Sandy all ventured to the bottom after everyone circled the top.  There were tiny stickleback fish in the lake, and the water was quite cold.  It reflects the surrounding water table. 

 
The Haukadalur Geothermal area was our next stop.  This is home to Strokkur, the “Old Faithful” of Iceland.  It erupts about every 10 minutes, shooting superheated water 200ft in to the air.  The original great Geysir of the same geothermal area quit erupting about 30 years ago.  There are several smaller bubbling geysers and cauldrons dotting the area.  We were able to witness a couple of eruptions of Strokkur while we were there, but it is hard to capture it on film unless you have endless patience. 

10 years ago, we raved about the lamb soup they served at the Geysir visitor center.  Interestingly enough, Sigga’s brother owned that restaurant, which unfortunately went out of business during the COVID pandemic.  It is now run by another unrelated company.  We did get Sigga to promise to help us procure the Súpu Jurtir soup herbs necessary for us to prepare the lamb soup back home.  

Gullfoss or Golden Falls was the next stop on our tour.  This unforgettable waterfall looks like it’s falling off two perpendicular knife edges until disappearing into the earth.

Once you find the right angle, it then becomes apparent that it disappears into a deep canyon at a 45º angle to the upstream portion of the river.  There is tremendous power evident in the water which fills the air with sound and mist.  
We were dropped off at the top of the falls and then wandered down to the base of the falls where we were picked up again.  

Sigga filled us in on some of the folklore surrounding the falls and the true story of how Sigríður Tómasdóttir saved the falls from being dammed for hydropower by foreign investors in the early 1900s by making repeated 120km treks to Reykjavik to protest the action.  She is frequently called Iceland’s first environmental activist.  Fortunately, the foreign investors were unable to successfully raise the capital necessary to bring the project to fruition, and it was eventually bought by the Icelandic government and made into a conservation site in 1979. 

 
Next came a pleasant surprise.  Sigga took us to a tomato farm called Friðheimer which produces the majority of tomatoes consumed in Iceland.  This greenhouse facility is heated and lit by geothermal energy.  It now has a very upscale restaurant and wine bar that has become very popular.  We got to tour the greenhouses and see how the tomato plants are trellised on a support structure that maximizes productivity.  
We were treated to an intimate private dining room in the wine bar greenhouse and had some very fancy and delicious tomato soup and salads with fresh-baked bread.  It was a unique and enjoyable dining experience.  

The next stop was Iceland’s first public swimming pool.  A fishing shipwreck that occurred just off the shore of some islands just off the shore of Iceland caused the entire crew to drown.  This led to a law requiring all Icelanders to learn to swim.  
What is very nice is that the availability of geothermal energy and abundance of natural hot springs made it relatively easy to construct swimming pools with geothermal heating.  

This facility is called the Secret Lagoon, and it is reminiscent of hot springs pools around the world.  There is a main pool that feels like it is nearly 90ºF in temperature, which would make for a pleasant swim even in the dead of winter.  There are surrounding hot tubs at various temperatures and even a cold plunge pool fed by the adjacent river.  

Our next stop was a visit to a dairy operation called Efstidalur.  Due to the harsh winters, cows must be kept indoors for much of the winter, or they would simply freeze to death.  During the summers, they are allowed to roam the pastures, but even in the US, many dairy operations have their dairy herds spend most of their lives indoors or at least under cover.  There are viewing windows that allow visitors to see the cows without disturbing them because the windows are one-way glass.  

We bought ice cream and frozen skyr, Icelandic yogurt, for dessert there.  

The last official stop on our Golden Circle tour was Thingvellir National Park, where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates pull away from each other along the mid-Atlantic ridge.  This is the only place where you can straddle between North America and Eurasia on land.  

This is also the location of the ancient Viking Parliament.  The rift creates a natural amphitheater, while the nearby river and waterfalls provided convenient facilities for carrying out executions because the Viking Parliament also served to mediate disputes and deal out justice.  There were overhanging rock cliffs convenient for hanging executions, and a perfectly shaped stone at the base of the nearby waterfalls for beheading.  And if drowning was preferred (it generally was the method used for women being executed), there was a nearby deep pool of icy cold water below the waterfalls into which the accused could be stuffed into a sack and drowned underwater.  

On those cheery notes, we headed back into Reykjavik, but not before making one last stop.  We went into a Hagkaup on the outskirts of Reykjavik.  

This is like an Icelandic Walmart or Fred Meyer’s store with a variety of goods and groceries.  This is where we were able to stock up on Súpu Jurtir Icelandic soup herbs.  These are used in conjunction with lamb on the bone like shoulder or chops to create the base of Icelandic meat soups.  

After returning to the hotel, we checked with the Viking concierge and learned that we will need to be in the lobby with our luggage by 8:45 a.m. for our airport transfer.  Our flight departs at 12:45pm and it can take an hour to get to the airport if traffic is a problem. 

 
We walked with our group back into Reykjavik’s shopping street and this time walked into 101 Reykjavik Street Food, the restaurant next to the Reykjavik Fish Restaurant we had eaten in before.  There was some contention as to which restaurant had the better fish and chips, but Ben and Janet really wanted to have Icelandic lamb soup before leaving Iceland, and 101 did have that on the menu.  Everyone else ordered fish and chips.

  
The general consensus was that the French fries were better at the 101, and the fish was a close call.  The Fish Restaurant used a beer batter while 101 used panko breading.  As for the soup, the menu item is actually traditional Icelandic Meat Soup, and there were definitely two different kinds of meat or cuts in the soup.  One was clearly lamb, but the other might have been another cut from a lamb or perhaps even horsemeat.  It was delicious and filling, and served with a hearty roll, but not as good as what we remembered of the lamb soup we had at Geysir 10 years ago.

We were pretty much the first people to wander into the restaurant at 6 p.m., but by the time we finished, there was a long line out the door, so the place is definitely popular.  We were wise to get there early.  

After returning to the hotel,  we got our suitcases reconfigured for airline check-in and also got our boarding passes electronically, so we’ll be prepared for tomorrow’s departure.