Tripping Home

A BRILL Keflavik wall

Keflavik, Iceland’s main airport, seems to always be in the midst of nasty-ass growing pains. Of course they are. Though the country, with Icelandair's big assist, has pushed to make the place a tourist destination, they weren’t prepared for the HUGE response. In 2016, most of Iceland’s tourists came from the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France and China.

In 2016 alone the number of people passing through the airport leapt by 40%, from nearly five million to nearly seven million. (source)

There are definite bumps, losses and big frustrations (more so for Icelanders!) as the country goes from quiet, cold, gorgeous fishing place to MUST SEE traveler mecca.  
Back to my kvetch though – Keflavik’s food court area is cramped and frustrating with nowhere near enough seating. That and there are no actual restaurants with, ya know, BOOTHS and friendly, attractive waitresses and waiters swinging cozily by, making the whole tedious air travel experience less egregiously annoying with a very dry martini or a light and lovely shot of Limoncello.

Nope, it's all molto cramped cafeteria and fast food style dining with, (do I really need to add this?), hard plastic chairs and bad lighting.

And then there's getting on the plane. There’s no boarding announcements like, Rows 20-40 may now board or people with children or needing special assistance may now board – nope. No queue, no order, just a packed mob around the gate. There were buses to ferry us out to the distant, waiting aircraft. After that there was a long flight of rickety stairs to climb to get into the air boat.

Those stairs? DEF not made for the balance impaired – moi, fer instance.

Here's something way cool though, on arrival and download in Iceland, two different men, noticing my death grip on the railing and that I was practically scooting down the steps on my butt, offered me their arms. How nice!

Gimme caps – a neon sign Hey, I’m a USA citizen.

Then, on the return trip, the press of the crowd was challenging my dubious ability to stay upright. We were by the rope separating us from the check-in stewardesses but very far back in the, purely theoretical, line. A man behind us, not an airline worker, noticed and slipped the rope off its pole, motioning us to slide through – right up to the check-in desk. What a sweet, thoughtful human!

I only mention it but I've had some good/not heinous crowd experiences this year. While not alleviating my crowd phobia, it's certainly causing me to rethink. Not all large groups of humans are mobs. I gotta keep that in mind.

Back in Boston, Logan a very busy yet usually well run, big city airport, gave me a nasty surprise – the long process of clearing customs seems to have been revamped with the specific intent of annoying and angering us folks who’ve been in cramped transit for the past six to ten hours. There were lines just to get INTO the lines to use the auto customs check-in machines AND only half of them were designated for use. Puzzling as hell is what this was. There were no out-of-order signs on the ones not being used and yet five different flights worth of folks (~2500-3000 souls) were pouring through – trying to anyway.

After that we had to join yet another long queue in order to show our customs receipt and answers questions from an actual live human official type. Redundant much? Whoever organized/set up this scheme should probably go back to school for a bit of remedial crowd management training. STAT!

Finally home, Coco greeted me right at the door. No guilt trips for having been away for THREE WHOLE DAYS. While she's wild for Oni, who takes tremendous, molto indulgent care of her, she was happy to have her main doormat and cuddler back home. Understatement alert: I missed her too.

Dawn at home