{"id":2254,"date":"2014-11-05T21:48:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T02:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/?p=2254"},"modified":"2014-11-05T21:57:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-06T02:57:32","slug":"a-tale-of-2-islands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/05\/a-tale-of-2-islands\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale of 2 Islands"},"content":{"rendered":"

In September, I went on my very first overseas trip.\u00a0 I had left the US many times before this year, but always on trips to Canada.\u00a0 In this case, I headed off for a 2-week vacation to Iceland and England.<\/p>\n

The motivation for this trip was an event announced back in March.\u00a0 Kate Bush<\/a>, one of my favorite musical artists, who had not performed in concert since years before I’d become a fan, put out word that she would be giving 15 concerts in London in September (that number was later expanded to 22 concerts).\u00a0 As I was already signed up for her site’s e-mail list, I received a code for a special pre-sale of tickets 2 days before the general public could buy them.\u00a0 I got up early in the morning on the pre-sale day, and managed to snag one of the tickets (all the pre-sale ones sold out in 30 minutes that day, and then all the rest of the show tickets sold out in 15 minutes a couple of days later).\u00a0 Once the ticket was in hand, I started to plan the rest of the trip around that concert.<\/p>\n

In looking at flights to London, I found that Iceland Air offers “stopover” itineraries, where one can fly between Europe and North America, and spend a few days in Iceland on the way, for the same price as if one just had a quick layover in the country.\u00a0 I decided to take advantage of that, and arranged to spend 5 days in Iceland and 7 in England.<\/p>\n

The trip itself began at Logan airport in Boston (well, it more began with my getting dropped off at the bus station in Springfield, and then taking a bus to Logan).\u00a0 Iceland Air appears to start their flights late in the day from there, as I arrived at the airport just about 3 hours before my flight, and their check-in counter was not yet open.<\/p>\n

While waiting for them to open, I noted the display of many countries’ flags in the international terminal:<\/p>\n

\"loganintflags\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once I got my bags checked, I headed into the security area, where they had this odd projection:<\/p>\n

\"loganhologram\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was a video of a person talking, projected from behind onto a person-shaped screen.\u00a0 I guess it’s kind of like a hologram, but I suppose it gets the attention of passengers, who might then be more likely to listen to the audio part of the recording (which was just the usual airport security guidelines).<\/p>\n

The flight itself was like many domestic flights I’ve been on, except that I had a screen available to me on the back of the seat in front of me, on which I could watch stuff.\u00a0 I ended up watching an Icelandic film called Metalhead<\/em>, which was pretty good, if a bit depressing (but not as depressing as many Scandinavian films I’ve seen in the past).<\/p>\n

Coming Next: my arrival in Keflavik.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In September, I went on my very first overseas trip.\u00a0 I had left the US many times before this year, but always on trips to Canada.\u00a0 In this case, I headed off for a 2-week vacation to Iceland and England. The motivation for this trip was an event announced back in March.\u00a0 Kate Bush, one … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2254"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2260,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions\/2260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}