Iceland Trip: June 10-17, 2006
background:
Reykjavik, Iceland (web site) was home this year to the Permutation Patterns 2006 conference (website). Since I was actually travelling for a math conference, I spent most of the week sitting in a lecture hall at Reykjavik Univeristy (web site) listening to math talks (and gave a talk myself). Nonetheless, figuring that it's not often I'll get to explore Iceland, every day after conference talks, I tried to make the most of tourist-y time as well. :)
My journey begins on Saturday, June 10. Instead of flying out of Newark airport (a 30 minute train ride from my house), I had a direct flight from JFK in New York City. However, this involved taking the train to Penn station in Manhattan (50+ minutes), then catching another train (20ish minutes) to Jamaica/Queens, and then the airport train from there. I started off on time, but as luck would have it, as the train pulled into Newark, the power on the amtrak lines between Newark and NYC went out. I was just barely running on time as it was when they kicked us all off the train and told us to wait for the Path trains to take us to the city instead. With the mob scene trying to change trains, and considering the fact that Path would only get me 30 blocks away from the next train I needed to be on, I went to my last resort and hailed a cab. Already with miles plus tolls, we were talking $80 cab ride. Add in traffic and me taking the cabbie out of his local area/state, and I had to fork over $100. But I got there, I checked in just barely on time, and I was glad to be heading out of the country... the rest of the trip is a happier story than that... click the links below to continue. :)
where to next?