Day One: Seattle to NYC

For a lot of people, finding out you have to spend a whole extra day traveling would be a bad thing. But I am embracing this "inconvenience" and taking advantage of my visit to NYC and Glasgow. Perhaps the only downside is the timing. In order to be coherent and (hopefully) avoid jetlag, I chose to stay up all night Friday so that I would be awake and very tired when I boarded my flight from Seattle to NYC. It worked. I slept almost the whole flight, and arrived in NYC feeling fairly well refreshed.

I feel like my positive attitude about the trip reroute has been rewarded. I knew that checking my bike on Icelandair was going to cost around $64 each way. But when I looked at the cost to check a bike on American Airlines (the Seattle -> NYC leg) it was around $100, plus the extra bag fee if you are checking more than one bag. I was checking three, including my bike. So I figured it would cost $135 or $150 for the bike. In reality, the Icelandair rates were automatically applied by American and, to my surprise, I paid $30 for everything to be checked all the way through to Iceland. I am still in shock. That is how much it costs to check a second bag on most airlines, sometimes even more.

And I was upgraded to an exit row seat to boot. Major props for Icelandair and for the American ticket agent.

The flight to JFK was simple, I slept almost the whole way, which is nice. It turns out that my 4 hour layover was more like a 6 hour layover, so I was able to get dinner with a friend in Queens. Yummy pizza, but too many screaming kids. It was nice to get out of the airport and enjoy a city that I haven't been to for a while.

And now I am back in the airport, waiting to board my flight to Glasgow. Here's to hoping the ash doesn't drift more and mess stuff up!