After waking up at 4am, I packed the rest of my bags, did some last minute cleaning, and then headed for the airport to begin my trip back to Iceland.

You may acknowledge the couch

On the way to the airport, I noticed the moon was looking especially crescent like; very close to being an eclipse. Other than that, the drive to the airport was uneventful.

After finding a place to park and snapping a quick picture of the moon, I headed to the terminal and met up with Jackson and Wally.

As usual, Wally had a new set of funky tech gadgets to show off, including a tiny functional Nintendo DS, and a pair of AR glasses that could be connected to his Steam Deck.

After checking our bags, we proceeded through security and boarded the first plane to Boston.

In Boston, we had a late breakfast at a fancy airport restaurant near our gate, and Wally showed off his NReal AR/VR glasses, which we were both quite impressed with. He could hook them up to his Steam Deck, and use it as a monitor, and the visuals looked quite nice.

After that, we got on our flight to Reykjavik.

The flight was uneventful, and I spent most of it listening to music. Wally played games on his Stream Deck while wearing the AR glasses, and looked like a crazy cyberpunk person.

When we arrivevd in Reykjavik, things started to go awry. I had been worried that my mobile data plan would not work internationally, despite support claiming it would, and it turned out thaat my fears were valid as I could not get mobile data roaming to turn on. I tried going through support, who claimed they turned it on, but I was still unable to access the internet.

On top of that, when we arrived at the bus terminal, The Booking.com app would not allow me to download the tickets. They even delayed the bus for us, but after a bit it became clear that it was not going to work, and the bus could not wait any longer. So we purchased new tickets in order to catch the next bus.

While we were waiting, I ended up just buying a data only SIM card from a local caompany, so that I coud get mobile data. Getting that working was incredibly straightforward, but for the duration of this trip, I no longer have a cell phone number.

We went to meet the next bus at the stated time, but it turned out it had already left, and the next was not for another hour. At this point, we were seriously worried that we would not be able to check in at our hotel, so we decided to just get a taxi, despie the high price.

The taxi dropped us off at the hotel just before midnight, and after trying to call the owner on the intercom, we nervously waited with no answer. After a bit, one of the patrons let us in to wait, but after the owner arrived he yelled at them for risking letting a murderer into the hotel. I didn't realize that Iceland was that dangerous...

After settling in our room, we found this property to be more like a hostel than a hotel, but at least we had a room to ourselves. We talked to some guys from Norway who were also staying at the hotel for a bit, and they showed us pictures from their travels. These included some close up pictures of the recent volcanic reuption, which they were able to take due to their connections with the Iceland search and rescue.

The final emergency for the evening was that Wally had forgotten to bring the power cord for his CPAP machine, which was something that he used to sleep. He is able to sleep without it, but does not get as well rested.

At the very least, we were thankful to have a place to sleep at all.