April 14, 2018
iceland \ boston
Behind the Scenes:
If you look closely at the bricks behind me you'll find a hidden message.
The Scene:
Travelling home is always a weird feeling. You get used to a place after living there for more than a week and packing your days to the brim. Suddenly Icelandic gas stations and Airbnb's had become the new normal. Not driving past snowy mountains and fjords would be weird. We began to question, does that CVS in Boston that we always go to even really exist? In the same way that we ask ourselves now, did those northern lights really exist?
Our flight wasn't until the evening, so we wandered the streets of Reykjavík one more time. We stumbled into Cafe Babalu which had delicious vegan carrot cake (not pictured below because it was already gone). It was a wonderfully eclectic place, filled with random books, photos, and trinkets; the collection of the thousands of travelers and natives who had been here before. It was drizzling outside and we were in no rush for the first time in a week.
But eventually we did have to leave, get back in the car, and head to the rental place. We got picked up in the same van that dropped us off a few days before, but somehow it all felt different. Because we were different. When we landed in Keflavík , we had no idea what to expect, and now we had driven the entire Ring Road, over mountain passes, through fjords, past waterfalls and along the coast of this amazing island. We did and saw more than most people do or see, and it was hard to leave.
But we did leave, and when we got home we stood in long customs lines, we ordered an Uber to take us home, we went to the local Chinese restaurant for dinner and went back to work on Monday. We slipped back into our normal life, but it didn't quite fit the same way, because Iceland had changed us.
Footnotes
- "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
