Ice' Ice' Baby

Interesting.

I'm far from the sharpest tack in the box, so it took me a little while to notice a big change in American travel plans...namely, that just about every other American is headed to Iceland these days for vacation.

Really! If you follow people on Instagram, all of a sudden, people are packing their corduroy pants and those down-filled jackets that make them look like a pineapple, and jetting over to Reykjavik or Hafnarfjörður or Eyrarbakki or Stokkseyri.

And here's further proof that we Americans have come down with IceFever...when I went to research this, I only had to type "Why is everyone trav" and Google popped up with "Why is everyone traveling to Iceland."  So when Google knows, everyone knows.

It all started in 2008.  As you'll recall, there was a global economic crisis that year, a snafu that spun out of the crazy subprime mortgage market in the US - when sketchy mortgage companies were giving million-dollar loans to 9-year olds for their treehouses - and then things totally went crazy when big banks such as Lehman Brothers crumbled like houses of cards. Over in Iceland, the nation that we were taught is not all icy (that's Greenland) there was a banking collapse due to over-borrowing and devaluation of the local currency. Bingo! Those long green American bucks could buy you a pretty nice stay in Iceland, and Americans all over raced down to LL Bean to stock up on down-filled clothes.

Baltimore to Iceland: 2,776 air miles 

And then! In 2010, the  
Eyjafjallajökull volcano over there blew its top, and while airlines scrambled to rescheduled hundreds of flights cancelled due to pilots not being able to see the ground below with all that volcanic ash in the air. But, Americans being as we are, dozens of thousands of us saw the news with the ash flying and the beautiful fjords dressed in smoking airborne firebrands and cinnamon cinders, and got on the phone with the airlines that very night.

I have to think that the Icelandic Tourism people hired a pretty sharp publicity person, because the next thing you know, TV shows and movies like Game of Thrones, Prometheus, Noah and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty were set in Iceland.  Travelers also benefited from a price war between the old established Icelandair and the upstart WOW Air, and that made getting there cheaper than riding Amtrak from Baltimore to New York.

Hotel prices are similarly reasonable, and the final selling point - the low cost of "My grandma went to Kjósarhreppur and all I got was this T-shirt" T-shirts to bring back home - has made Iceland the new Niagara Falls or Grand Canyon for the once-in-a-lifetime vacationer.

Send me a postcard or bring me a T-shirt, please.