Travel Tuesday : That Moment

I commented in my department meeting a couple of weeks, that I knew I needed to get away, and hoped that I would be less grumpy when I returned.  One of my colleagues had a bit of a breakthrough moment on that comment, it was me being stressed when I was occasionally short with her and others.  I know when I get stressed, I get grumpy. The best solution is a change of scenery. 

A note to Iceland:

Dear Iceland, 

Please don't change, stay wild, and clean, don't cave into McD's or Starbucks (there are none of either in the country,) but please build more scenic pull-offs so people can stop and absorb the wonders around them. 

I pulled into one of the few wide spots to take this photo, opened the door, and I could hear the birds, and a tiny waterfall rushing down the cliff face across the road.  It was one of those magical moments, when I knew I was someplace different, someplace wondrous. 

I was in Reykjavik a couple of days, when I realized I was one of the few people with a mask hanging around my face.  Iceland mastered test and trace early on. The adult vaccination rate is extremely high.  While we were there the minister of health declared that Iceland has reached herd immunity, enough people immune to COVID 19, that the illness would have a hard time getting beyond isolated outbreaks.  The moment, feeling safe in public. I won't say a return to normal, I am not sure that normal was all it was cracked up to be.  But certainly a light at the end of the tunnel.  I splurged on a taxi back to the airport Saturday morning ($133.) The taxi driver was a local, he said the United States Centers for Disease Control called the Iceland health minister and asked how did Iceland do it? His answer was, we did what I was trained to do, when I went to medical school in the United States, follow your training. 

It was 6 days filled with moments.