ICELAND AND GREENLAND, AN OVERVIEW AND A JOURNEY

Every five years my husband, his four law partners, and their spouses take a trip together.  This all started in 2009 when they were celebrating 15 years as a law firm. That year we went to Peru. We had so much fun that we decided to do it again. In 2014, we all traveled to Kenya and Tanzania. That was also a great trip, so we decided to do it one last time.

The five men had a hard time coming up with a destination for their 25th anniversary this year. Most of the couples travel quite a bit, so finding a place no one had been was the first challenge, finding somewhere that everyone wanted to visit was another, and finding a date that would work for everyone was yet another.

The stars all aligned for a trip to Iceland and Greenland, June 9 to 19. I must confess, this wasn't my first choice of a destination. Neither country had ever really been on my bucket list, but Bob was pretty excited about it.

It turned out out to be a really fun trip, partly because I love the people we traveled with, and partly because--okay, I'll admit it--I grew to love the destinations.

Although it seems like the two countries would be very much alike, they definitely are not.

CRITERIA	ICELAND	GREENLAND
SIZE	39,682 square miles (About the size of Kentucky)	836,300 square miles (21 times bigger than Iceland)
POPULATION IN 2019	358,000+	56,672
POPULATION DENSITY	3 people per square kilometer, or 8 people per square mile, making it the least densely populated European country (Compare to Alaska, with 1.3 per square mile, or Wyoming, with 6 per square mile)	.026 people per square kilometer, making it the least densely populated country in the world
LARGEST CITY	Reykjavik (Capital): 128,793	Nuuk (Capital): 17,984
LANGUAGE	Icelandic (North Germanic language descended from Old Norse)	Greenlandic (Eskimo-Aleut language) and Danish (Most citizens are bilingual.)
GOVERNMENT	Semi-colony of Denmark until they achieved Independence in 1918.	Became Danish in 1814 and was fully integrated into Denmark in 1953. Denmark granted Greenland home rule in 1979.
CURRENCY	Icelandic Krona	Danish Krone
GDP	$54,753 per capita	$37,000 per capita
RELIGION	Lutheran	Lutheran
TOURISM	2.2 million tourists in 2017	32,767 tourists in 2016 (and fewer than 3,000 were from the US)
UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITES	2	3

In addition, both countries are pretty far north (requiring winter clothing, even in June, and having 24 hours of continuous daylight while we were there), but most of Greenland is inside the Arctic Circle.

We left home at 6:15 AM on Sunday, June 9, 2019, traveling with two of the other couples in a rental van to LAX, where we met a fourth couple and checked in with plenty of time to eat a substandard breakfast in one of the airport restaurants.

The first leg of our flight to Montreal was 5 1/4 hours long, and I had the joy of sitting in the middle seat between Bob on the aisle and a girl next to the window who threw up on take off and again on landing. I figure she must have anxiety issues. 

We were flying on Air Canada for the first time, and we were not impressed. The plane was old and while there were screens on the back of the seats, they worked so poorly that I didn't even try to watch a movie. The leg room was okay, but the center aisle was so narrow that Bob was continually being bumped. It was a relief to finally land and deplane.

O, Canada!

I prefer the above shopping lures to the funky tire art in the hallways:

During our Montreal layover, eight of us (the remaining couple was on another flight) ate a wonderful lunch at the restaurant L'Auberge. I had "pork soup," which turned out to be unusually good (for an airport, especially) ramen with very tender pork belly and half an egg. Bob had a decent lobster roll.

The second leg of our flight to Rekyavik was also on Air Canada, and this plane was even worse than the first. There was no legroom and no screen at all, and the flight was five hours long.

The Keflavik Airport, about 50 km from Reykjavik, is the main international airport for Iceland. It is new and clean and was relatively empty when we arrived on the morning of June 10. I noticed this sign in the airport and saw it many more times during our trip. I love the pitch "Roaming free since 874." We often heeded the advice to eat lamb while in Iceland:

Adventure, here we come!

READING

We are in a book club with one of the couples that made this trip with us, and they suggested Frozen Assets by Quentin Bates as the read for the book club meeting that will happen shortly after our return from this trip.  This is the first in a series of four novels featuring Officer Gunnhildur, a tough female Icelandic detective.  The novel opens with a dead body, and the story follows Gunnhildur as she investigates the crime. The plot ties in to the financial crisis of 2008, which hit Iceland particularly hard. A few familiar locations are incorporated into the story, as well as some interesting aspects of Icelandic culture.

This is a fun and unusual (at least for me) introduction to the country, and definitely a good vacation read.