Iceland: Exploring the Island’s Volcanos and Waterfalls
A trip to Iceland was on my bucket list for many years. My only previous “visit” to this remote nation was in 1970 when my low-cost Icelandic Air flight from New York’s JFK to Luxembourg stopped there briefly for refueling. For years I have been saying that I had landed in Reykjavik, but in reality, I had stopped briefly at the airport in Keflavik, about thirty miles southwest of the capital city. I learned on my recent trip that the Keflavik airport is on the site of a US Naval base, established during World War II as a strategic location for the Allies. The US “occupation,” as the Icelanders referred to our presence there, didn’t end until 2006. When Icelandic Air (now Icelandair) started flying between the US and Europe, it was given tax breaks because it flew out of the US Naval base. So many young Americans flew this route in the early 1970s, that Icelandic Air was also known as the “hippie airline.” Before the Covid pandemic interrupted all or o...