And So It Begins..

 Leah and I started our trip on the right foot: with a 7.5 hour layover in Iceland. But before any of that, I had to get to Iceland, which was a very fantastic ordeal indeed. I was coming from Sacramento (she was already in New York) which seemed like a very bad idea but ended up working out quite well in the end - no meaningful sleep for 40 h meant no jet lag for me!

My flight itinerary went as follows

Sacramento to Philadelphia 10pm

Philadelphia to La Guardia (New York, NY) 7am

Transfer La Guardia to JFK (New York)

JFK to Reykjavik 2pm

Reykjavik to London 8am

The flight to Reykjavik was really quite stellar; beautiful geography, and this view made me feel as if I'm glancing over the entire earth. They also had little TVs on the back of every seat, little water bottles with water from Iceland, and pillows and blankets! Probably the nicest flight I've ever been on and a good way to start the trip!

When we landed it was midnight local time, though totally light out! it became somewhat dark around  3am but was light again by five!

We were in row 27 so got to sit for a while before getting off the plane and got to see our backpacks unloaded - so relieving! they are in the plastic bags; funny story as they didn't want to give those to us - pulling out every excuse from "we haven't got any, they're all in another terminal" to "only for car seats" to "hmm found these in the back and i assure you THEY ARE THE LAST TWO"

our layover was Seven plus hours of absolute nothing. it ended up being quite easy and I'd do it again, well worth the three hundred dollqrs saved: we ended up ,meeting another girl with the same layover times.... going to Amsterdam, though. We spent the night chatting, complaining, eating, runningto the toilet (me, something didn't sit right), giggling over the Icelandic word for bathroom (snyrting...heheh), making fun of the Icelandic police officers behind their back (they looked about17 years old), checking the Internet on our phones (we had to pay 8000 isk for the service - about 9 usd.) etc;

4am selfies

Hopping around in my glorified blanket... aka the REI 55+ sleep sack

they had scooters for getting around the airport and transporting goods... it was hilarious to see officials passing by our bench on foot powered scooters

 then it was time for our final flight to get us into London! we went back downstairs at 7am to board our plane... i was so tired by then and the flight was miserable, bumpy and loud somehow i managed to fall asleep before takeoff but woke up right after and was awake for the rest.

finally we were in london!!!!