It was meant to be a trip to Sweden to help my husband and his siblings trace their roots, but when my sister-in-law learned that we would connect through Iceland, she suggested we take a few days there to check it out. Why not? It turns out that Icelandair offers a layover in Reykjavik of up to a week without additional fees. The only catch was that we would arrive in Iceland at 6 a.m. To make our jet lag as tolerable as possible, we would need to join the local time zone immediately and stay awake for the rest of that long day. Happily, there was plenty to keep us busy.
Our kind taxi driver, Siddi Kristinsson, took us into Reykjavik, about a 45-minute drive from the Keflavik International Airport, while he told us about the surrounding lava fields and explained that geothermal resources in Iceland make the electricity there the cheapest in the world. We passed an American factory that makes aluminum from raw materials they ship to Iceland because melting them there is so inexpensive. He continued to point out important spots as we wound through Reykjavik to the harbor where our apartment awaited.
