Iceland, my children. Iceland. Iceland, you ask? But you don't even speak the language! Never fear, kids and caboodles. I just want to go to Iceland, and I can swear it will be awesome if you jump aboard for the ride.

This was spurred partly by a New York Times article on budget travel in Iceland published sometime in 2003, though I can't for the life of me find it in archives. I'd never really considered going to Iceland before, or even where the hell Iceland is, or what the hell they speak there. But: getting there is remarkably easy, and there are natural wonders up the wazoo there. It's exotic and European and eerie in that Artic-circle sense, but fares are incredibly cheap through IcelandAir: something on the order of $214 per person round trip from Boston to Reykjavik when travelling in a pair, which is considerably cheaper than a round-trip ticket from California to New Jersey. Even better, they offer a free stopover in Reykjavik if you fly their carrier to any European city.

So, one could potentially stop in Iceland for a week of backpacking, then mosey on to Paris for wandering on paved streets. I haven't had a good, old, real, live, longer-than-one-weekend wilderness excursion in a while. In Iceland, I want to hike across alpine meadows, seek out remote hot springs, tread on real live warm volcanic detritus, and go butt-sledding down parts of a glacier. Icelandic Mountain Guides has some great-sounding itineraries. The downside is that their trips are expensive and I'm not sure I like traveling in tour groups, so I'd like to put together a 5-day backpacking trip based on their excursions. Daily costs should be minimal once launched on the trip, and on top of that it's just a day or two's hostelling in Reykjavik.

After that, France... maybe visit Montmartre, rent bikes and cycle a stage of the Tour de France route at leisure, do succumb to the magnetic draw of the Louvre for a day, finally learn something about wine... J'ai passé sept années en étudiant cette belle langue mais jusqu'au maintenant je n'ai jamais visité le pays!

Anyway, I've gotten a little carried away by this proposition. Problematically, my summer schedule is about a month offset from everyone else in the free world; the best time for me to travel is mid-September. I'm also limited as to the length of travel, since the several summer options I've interviewed and now have my fingers very tightly crossed for would probably require me to spend 10ish weeks in the (albeit cool) cubicle. And I do want to spend at least a week at home, in addition to jetting around l'Europe.

But hit me if you want to discuss.

And there is my humdrum, pragmatic first post, my charitable contribution toward "Every Day in Ma... rch"!