Northern Europe cruise | Travel day

It’s Wednesday, June 14, and our long-awaited cruise to Iceland, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, and England leaves out of Reykjavík, Iceland tomorrow afternoon.

center

We usually get up between 3-4 a.m. to catch an early flight to our vacation destinations, so it was nice to have a mid-morning flight for a change. Our itinerary:

Northern Europe BearCruise outbound air travel itinerary

Upgrade to business class

Last week, we got an email from Icelandair letting us know about their “upgrade offer,” which consists of making them an offer to upgrade to business class, which we did, and which they eventually accepted.

In addition to much more comfortable and roomier seats, a 3-course meal, and free drinks during the 5-hour flight from Boston to Reykjavík, we got access to the Icelandair Lounge at Logan airport for our 7-hour layover.

Icelandair lounge

The Icelandair lounge opened at 2:30 and we were in it at 2:35. You’re only supposed to be let in 3.5 hours before your flight, which would have been closer to 5:30 for us, and the person at the lounge check-in raised one brow and said, “You’re kind of early, but go ahead in.”

We took advantage of its open bar for a few cocktails and had a nice lunch—all of it complimentary. And we were there long enough to have dinner, too, so we split an order of fish & chips as we wanted to save room for our meal on the flight. First world problem, I know. But since we live in a first world, it’s a valid problem.

Icelandair flight

There were 5 rows of business class seating on this Boeing 767-300ER, and we were in:

Our seats—4A & 4B

Awaiting us at our seats were a blanket, a pillow, a “Travel Essentials” pack, and some noise-canceling headphones. Before we could even buckle up, our attendant brought us a glass of champagne to welcome us to Icelandair.

Inflight information and entertainment

Bob’s movie summary and review:

And we each finished our respective book during the 5.25-hour flight:

Inflight 3-course meal

Group “check-in”

We’re cruising with a group of about 150-175 gay men, a good contingent of whom have been trickling in to Reykjavík over the past few days. Here’s a group pic we received during our travel day. We’ll join them tomorrow morning when we arrive @ 6:05, and the cruise sail-away is at 6 PM.

BearCruise bears in Reykjavík

Leave a Comment