The first thing

Yay, I have made it to Iceland! After my flight was cancelled and I was re-booked by the airline to a flight six hours later, I finally set foot on Icelandic ground long after midnight, not too chuffed by the thought that my pick-up will be at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning and there will be a long day of work ahead of me. The first thing I notice about this new place is that my suitcase has obviously decided it didn’t want to come along. Luckily, I am a terrible pessimist. The Best Husband in the World and my Darling Son will roll their eyes at me when I pack my hand luggage and put in two spare sets of underwear, an extra hat, scarf and pair of gloves, and all the stuff I will definitely not need on the first few days of my trip but would sorely miss if my luggage were ever lost for good, such as the photographs of my loved ones I put up in my cabin or the salt shaker (because for some unfathomable reason there is no such thing in a crew mess, ever).

So, as a very happy pessimist, I arrive in Reykjavik minus a suitcase, but all good to go for the next few days with enough pairs of socks to to tide me over, and the next thing I notice is how wonderful Iceland smells. It’s cold and misty, the air feels fresh and clean. Sounds are muffled, and I imagine that the smell that the air carries is made up of sea and salt, of moss and wet rocks, and possibly of the smell of little elves dancing. Weirdly, I can’t sense the foul odour of kerosene that usually lingers around airports.

My friendly taxi driver takes me to my hotel in Reykjavik, where I finally drop dead into bed around 3 a.m. Icelandic time and catch a bare minimum of sleep before getting ready to find out whether the rest of Iceland smells equally good as that first breath of air I took a the airport, in the middle of the night.