Ev's Georgick's Travel Blog

I picked London, so Tamara Georgick searched in the usual places trying to find the best deals. Iceland Air consistently offered some of the more competitive fares for travel between Seattle and London with the fewest stopovers. Iceland Air? Never heard of them either? Apparently they’ve only been serving Seattle-Tacoma since July ’09 (a total of seven North American cities, some only seasonally?). All flights from Seattle go through the capital of Reykjavik, with connections continuing on to 19 European countries. There’s a big push for tourism dollars in Iceland, and the Airline made it really easy to extend what would have been a typical one and a half hour layover at the airport into a 3 night stay in Reykjavik. I never expected to travel to Iceland. I had other must see destinations higher on the list, but I’m totally looking forward to visiting this island. What an interesting and unexpected opportunity! Gateway to the center of the earth here we come!

Also available through Iceland Air’s online advanced booking engine are multi-city itineraries, allowing you to basically string together several one way tickets to create your own custom round trip ticket. Our return flight actually leaves out of Amsterdam, rather than London (with a transfer in Reykjavik and a layover of about 90 minutes). The trick is to make sure you travel on the cheaper dates or it won’t seem like much of a deal at all. Actually that’s why our trip ended up being two weeks long, instead of the ten days or even the one week we were originally planning. Traveling on shorter dates with less time in each city, or even skipping a city altogether, priced out a lot higher. It became a wash with the higher price of longer hotel stays, so why not?! The plan for getting from London to Amsterdam is Rail and Sail. After 6 nights in London, we hop a train from London to the port of Harwich, then take the overnight sleeper ferry (a berth with a view) across the English Channel into The Netherlands. Then its another train from the Hook of Holland port into Amsterdam, where we’ll spend 3 more nights before heading back home. Woo hooh, sounds like a fun and fabulous trip to me!

To recap:
Depart Seattle – Saturday, October 17, 1 overnight on the plane
Arrive Reykjavik – Sunday, October 18, stay 3 nights (10/18-10/20)
Depart Reykjavik – Wednesday, October 21 & arrive in London the same eveing
6 nights in London (10/21-10/26)
Depart London – Tuesday, October 27, 1 overnight on the ferry
Arrive Amsterdam – Wednesday, October 28, stay 3 nights (10/28-10/30)
Depart Amsterdam – Saturday, October 31 & arrive back home the same day (due to the time difference)