Iceland Day 13 – Friday, September 19, 2014
Leaving Iceland
Since we had a late afternoon flight, Gundrun told us we could stay as long as we wanted today, as her next guests weren't coming until the evening. Had it been a clear day, I would have felt compelled to leave early enough to go to Reykjavik and ascend the tall church tower, but, alas, it was raining, so we spent the morning lazing around and packing. It was nice to relax in our nice apartment before flying and changing time zones anyway.
It's about an hour's drive to the airport from Mosfellsbaer, and we went ahead and left about noon for our 4:50 flight so we wouldn't have to rush. It stopped raining on the way to the airport, which was too late to help our sightseeing, but it was good that the plane wouldn't have any weather to deal with. We stopped by the town of Keflavik for a few minutes to get expensive Iceland gas one last time.
Keflavíkurkirkja
At 1:30 we turned in our car to Blue Car Rental. Tom pointed out to the rental agent where he had tied up the free-hanging piece underneath the car to the bumper, and to Blue Car's credit, they believed Tom's (true) story of pointing out that the thingamajig was loose when we picked the car up to begin with, in spite of it not being noted on our paperwork, and they did not charge us for any damage!
Total Iceland Mileage: 3,828 kilometers! (2,300 miles!)
Total Iceland Gas: $470
Weird airport art
Way weirder airport art
The three and a half hours we had at the airport before our flight was a good amount of time. We turned in the car, checked in for the flight, drank a little wine, went through security and passport control, spent the last of our cash at duty free, ate an overpriced and mediocre airport meal, and by then, our flight was boarding. There were only two empty seats on the flight, and one of them was in our row of three. Yes! On board we watched a documentary about the 2010 and 2011 eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull that caused major disruptions to air travel. Glad we didn't have that problem!
Goodbye, Iceland!
We landed at Dulles in D.C. at 7:10 p.m. and caught a shuttle to the Sheraton Reston, where we'd left our car, spending the night before driving back to Knoxville. We did a park/fly/sleep arrangement with Sheraton and got a huge luxurious room for the night with a big American king-sized bed plus 15 days of parking for only $130. The deal of the trip! For dinner we went to the hotel restaurant and had big delicious American hamburgers and beers that didn't break the bank. We end this fantastic trip happy and content.
Tom in Keflavík - Goodbye, dear readers!
THE END
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