For those unfamiliar with the expression, itchy feet is a traveler’s disease. It is the unquenchable desire to escape everyday life to explore someplace new. Like other viruses, once contracted, it remains in the body forever, flaring up at the most inconvenient times. The only treatment is hair of the dog. You’ve got to get the hell out of Dodge to find any relief. For me, treatment is only effective when airplanes and passport stamps are involved – long weekends and camping trips rarely make a difference – and generally, the destination must be someplace new. Unless it’s Iceland. Read More
ByGD
Got Itchy Feet? Put Iceland On Them
ByGD
Toilet Training
Broadly speaking, our assumptions are just generalizations of things we know to be true in specific instances. With every additional piece of knowledge, our assumptions become more reliable. Because actual experience sticks so much better than book learnin’ travel provides the double benefit of specific information in a format we will never forget.
For example:
Last night at the pub, I followed the “Toilet” sign directing me down the basement stairs. Read More
ByGD
Welcome to Iceland
Reykjavik Bay
After years of yearning and months of planning, I am finally in Iceland. There is always a bit of cognitive dissonance in the last few hours before a big trip; it’s impossible to quite comprehend that this time tomorrow, you will be in a completely different place that so far only exists in your imagination. I am grateful in a way for the almost uniform sterility of airports. Their almost-the-same blandness worldwide creates a sort of purgatory that helps one make the transition from here to there.
It has been something like 15 years since I traveled to Europe, (even now, Iceland only sort of counts) and five years since my last real travel adventure. I am certainly rusty. I had forgotten how much longer everything takes when you don’t know what you’re doing. When traveling east means returning to the familiar, you don’t notice how much worse the jet lag is in that direction. Read More