Land of Ice

I left Thursday for Copenhagen at 6 am but didn’t actually arrive until Friday at 6 pm. But I loved it! Not only did I send next to some really fun people on the planes, I also had a six hour layover in Reykjavik, Iceland. There was no way I was going to miss what might be my only chance to see Iceland so I hopped on a bus to the 40 minute ride into the city.

On the way, I met a guy from San Francisco. We immediately bonded over the fact that we’re from the same hometown and in Iceland together (of all places!) so after he dropped his stuff off at the hostel we wandered around the city. The picture is of Lawrence, my new friend, in an Icelandic antiques store. Almost all the shops were closed until around 11 am and the streets were totally deserted, it was the weirdest thing ever! This shop was one of the only open ones we could find.

We wandered over to the Reykjavik City Hall, a place that was literally inside of a lake, it was really beautiful.

Finally we climbed up the stairs of this cathedral to see all of Iceland from above. I couldn’t believe all of the glaciers surrounding the whole city, it was incredible! It was also really interesting later, when I got to Copenhagen and spoke with a few of the Icelandic youth delegation. Apparently all of the glaciers are expected to be gone within the next 500 years, they’re melting really fast.

It’s so hard to explain to the youth from Iceland or some of the youth that I met from the Caribbean and Kenya that the majority of Americans don’t believe that global climate change is a problem when their entire countries are already feeling the effects of warming temperatures.