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An Icelandic geyser. There are hundreds. (Wikimedia)
We are in Paris, where we will stay for a month (sing it now: “April in Paris”). We flew here via Icelandair.
That’s right: Icelandair.
Looking down from above Iceland, Icelandair’s Great Circle routes makes perfect sense.
Flying to Europe over Iceland makes sense if you utilize a world globe rather than a map. Stretch the shortest possible string around the globe from Portland to Paris. It’ll loop right over Iceland. Cartographers know it as a great circle route. Icelandair discovered it long ago and they’ve capitalized on it ever since.
(This link shows the shortest Portland-to-Paris route on the Great Circle Mapper.)
All Icelandair flights stop in Reykjavik. Icelandair has long promoted a “Stopover” program there, encouraging travelers to spend as many as seven days on the island without paying extra for the flight. The program perked along for fifty years without much trouble until 2014, when Icelandair saturated social media with the #MyStopover campaign. The campaign was a rollicking success. Happily torpid Icelanders were gobsmacked by the response. Our experience (which follows) is an example of how gobsmacked they really were.
(Isn’t that cool? I got to use gobsmacked twice!)
Keflavik International Airport
We arrived at Keflavík International Airport, the airline’s hub, two hours late (headwinds) and ran to the Departures monitor. Our Paris flight wasn’t listed. (Really? Paris?) We got a gate number along with an apology at an information desk, and sprinted to our gate. Which was downstairs. Where there were no chairs. Nor a waiting area. Nor heat. Two hundred people lined up on frigid metal stairs, waiting to show their boarding passes to the single attendant at the gate.
Eventually we were whisked outside where swirls of snow whipped around waiting buses. We dashed to ours and huddled inside for ten minutes like Arctic penguins, our backs to the open doors. Decorative drifts accumulated at our feet.
No jetways here.
The bus finally underway, we arrived at our 757 and queued outside to hike up the stairs. Inside the plane, people stuffed oversized luggage into overhead compartments while attendants exhorted us to “Hurry along, people are waiting in the snow.”
De-icing the wings
Eventually the doors closed. The cabin began to warm. We thawed while they de-iced the wings. Three hours later we exited the plane in Parisian sunshine.
Would we fly Icelandair again? In spite of all the snafus, the answer is probably yes, and we might take them up on the Stopover program too. It’s a different world up there; we’d be foolish to pass it up.
They’ll have heated gates by then, I’m sure.
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The Expat Almanac 
Can not wait to read about all the cool things you will discover and write about while in Paris
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Great to hear from you, Denise. And hear from us you will, soon. If we wrote about our experiences now however, I’m afraid it would all be about rain (lots) and bronchitis (Louise). She’s recovering and it’s abating. More to come.
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Okay. As long as you’re sure.
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I know there are already two more posts, but there has been lots of sunshine here, weeds in moist soil needed attacking and since there are showers today, I finally find time. Yes, one should take advantage of their layover, even their short layover that transports people to the Blue Lagoon. I thought it would be too silly, but gee, I LOVED it and wish for a “beam me up” to get there several times a year. I liked everything about Iceland far more than I expected. Spent a week there last July. I was surprised how up to date and high tech everything else was, except the airport. I also stood in line with no chairs. We were finally let into the outer area, with chairs, but even in July it was noticeable that there was no heat. Coming and going, the only “speed bumps” I encountered were in the airport. All else, food, scenery, people and naturally heated hotel rooms were just very fine. Am hoping to do a impulse trip when the sun gets active in the winter and there would be high odds to see the Northern lights.
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Funny you would mention the Northern Lights. You may have noticed: our Icelandair plane featured northern lights overhead in the cabin. They slowly pulsated all night while we winged our way to Keflavik. Cool!
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