Air travel makes us ugly

It's hard to describe the bleakness of Iceland. The route from the airport to Reykjavik cuts through craggy black lava fields studded with standing piles of stone that look eerily like gnomes huddled against the cold. That your first exposure to this uniquely peculiar island should be such a lifeless moonscape somehow befits the place's character.

I should like Iceland, I really should. My ancestors were Vikings from nearly this far north, in the northernmost of the Shetland Islands.

I think I prefer Florida.

Icelanders' grasp of English is sketchy at best, and their native tongue sounds like a recording played backwards. I understood perhaps a third of what our driver tried to convey. I think he said that all the electricity here is powered by the geysers and that cold hotel water is either unmatched anywhere else on earth or impossible to achieve because the geysers are so hot. They are very proud of their water here. There doesn't appear to be much else, to be honest.

Because we arrived at our hotel in the morning, after a groggy night on a plane, and needed to crash well before the usual check-in hour, we had reserved an extra night and confirmed ahead of time that our room would be waiting. This was nearly too much for the unflappably pleasant blond elf at the front desk to comprehend. Wielding an infuriating smile and a soft, passive-aggressive voice, he consulted numerous calendars and rule books while Bill grew more restless. I now realized that the lad's demeanor was designed to defuse American impatience. His colleague, an Icelandic milkmaid in reindeer leggings and heavy sweaters, remained glued to her phone, showing no sign of talking to anyone. When she finally lent a hand, we were weaving with exhaustion, but succeeded.

New snags greeted us at the room. None of the lights appeared to work, nor would any of our numerous adapters allow us to charge any of our electronic devices.  Oh boy. I get the chance to talk to Snowball the Elf again. This time he provided an adapter for our iDevices, mildly admonishing me to return it when we were finished. I wanted to punch his sweet little nose. He also said that, to have electricity, one must insert one's door card in a special "No Smoking" slot inside the room.  Why refraining from smoking should have anything to do with turning on the lights was unclear to me, but it worked. All the lights went on at once, and we both fell asleep for several hours.