LH Franz Once travel dates were settled, flight and lodging reservations made, and a Covid plan created, we were ready to take on activities related to actually, physically, picking yourself up and going somewhere.
I’ve already mentioned frequent flyer miles. After returning from Paris, in preparation for my next trip, I had taken out an airline affiliated credit card. Besides providing a bundle of frequent flyer miles, this card gave me access to the airline’s lounge at the airport and, for a small fee, put the words “Priority boarding” on my boarding pass. In truth, I’m not sure how much more quickly you get on the plane with “priority” boarding. I’m reminded of the very funny Key & Peele “Boarding Order” video on the subject. At the very least, I figured it would give me a bit of a head start getting carry-on storage space. Given how people are packed into airplanes these days, every inch counts.
I also got a new paper notebook and a set of pens to write my travel journal. All of my blog entries start as a travel journal handwritten with ink on paper. It’s a calming experience, somehow bringing observations and thoughts more solidly into focus.
I had to buy some new slacks, as during pandemic, I kind of outgrew my old pairs (that is, got fatter).
After reading about people in hotels dying in their sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning, I bought a small, portable CO detector. It uses AA batteries and does not depend on local electricity to run.
Remembering the cell phone experience in Paris three years before, Daughter and I decided to bring separate cell phones with us for our Icelandic SIM cards. We each had old smartphones hanging around from when we replaced them with newer models, perfectly acceptable for what we would need for one week’s vacation.
Iceland sounds like a really cold country, so we did some research on what weather to expect. It seems the weather in late spring is a lot like early spring weather in New Jersey: Daytime temperatures between 40 – 50 degrees Fahrenheit (7 – 10 degrees Centigrade) and colder at night. My fleece-lined L.L. Bean hoodie would do. If it got too cold, I could always buy a sweater to layer under it while I was there, or even a warm coat. We were, after all, going to a modern, westernized country with department stores and everything.
Finally, decisions had to be made about what to download onto my iPad for in-flight viewing. Galaxy Quest and I, Claudius were no-brainers. In 2019, I had brought a portable Kubrick film festival. This time, the collection was more varied:
- The Godfather and The Godfather Part II (Never been crazy about Part III.)
- The Big Short (About the 2008 financial disaster. I had to watch this one three times and read the book All the Devils Are Here before feeling I had a decent understanding about how this whole fiasco played out. An additional viewing couldn’t hurt. Besides, it’s a great movie.)
- Jurassic Park (Of course!)
- Snatch (Comedic criminals, subtitles mandatory due to heavy British English accents and incomprehensible Traveler accents.)
Observing all this activity, Husband joked I’m preparing for this trip more than Napoleon prepared for invading Russia! I retorted that if I had been the one to prepare for the Russian invasion, I would’ve won! That was a couple of days before departure. For a while after that, he took to sometimes calling me “Napoleon.”
