A fountain of herons in Copenhagen. I had to fight the urge to use a food photo…

It’s been a while since I’ve written once of these. Getting on for two years, in fact. Recent times have not been kind to my straying feet. Still, the fact is that I’m back on the road, or rather in the air, once more, and not just for a quick hop across to London—my only other overseas destination in all that time.

The opportunity to finally make it to Iceland, a long-desired travel destination, was too good to pass up, and I consequently raided my piggy bank to pay for the cheapest flights I could find.* Which brings me to this point: up in the air, on my way to Copenhagen as stage one of a two-part trip to the land of ice and fire.

These days, the act of travelling doesn’t excite me half so much as the fact of being somewhere new. I have an eight-hour layover in Copenhagen between flights, which is something of a bonus arising from my pursuit of value. On an earlier trip, I had intended to spend a few hours in Copenhagen on my way to Stockholm, but train-related misadventures turned those few hours into around 15 minutes. Barely enough to peek outside the train station (the view consisted mainly of bicycles) before catching the next overnighter on my itinerary.

It’s an odd time to be leaving Dublin too. The sun was baking the airport tarmac as we boarded the plane, granting a Mediterranean feel to a nation more accustomed to rain and climatic misery. I should feel right at home in Iceland, it seems: While Copenhagen is sunny at present, Reykjavik seems to be under a cloud right now. Rain-bearing, that is.

This isn’t entirely a solo trip either, for all of my use of the first-person singular thus far. I have friends to meet in my brief tour around Copenhagen, and while I may be arriving in Iceland on my lonesome, and close to midnight, I’ll be meeting my travelling companion the next day. Hopefully, at least: he’s coming from a lot further away than I am, and his travels have been much, much wilder.

*Not a metaphor. At the tail-end of my second college career, my piggy bank is more fully funded than I am.