Where We Stayed: Cottage of the Dead Goose

The day before we arrived in Iceland, we received a message from our AirBnB host, Káritas, wondering if our flight that evening had been canceled. Canceled? We hadn't heard of anything, but our antenna were up for the rest of the day. As I packed and Joel worked, we obsessively refreshed the flight tracker, hoping the status would stay "Scheduled." A canceled flight would mean losing a whole day, as Icelandic Air only travels overnight from Boston.

Luckily, we were spared a cancelation, and arrived at the Keflavik Airport at 7:30am the next morning after a relatively easy flight, despite neither of us sleeping very much. After a lengthy FlyBus ride into Reykjavik through lava fields dotted with occasional, small huts near the angry ocean, we arrived on Óðinsgata - Odin's Gate - in the Neighborhood of the Gods. Our hostess Káritas's mother, Anna Maria, greeted us and took our luggage, apologizing for the dead goose in the back yard.

"We just found it an hour ago," she said, "in the middle of the road. I think it had a heart attack."Joel and I looked down at the wing protruding from the mound of snow. It was already almost totally buried.

"Worst winter we've had," she continued, leading us into the small cottage at the back of the house, where we would store our luggage until our apartment was ready. Lucky us.

When we came back a few hours later, we walked into a cozy, three-room ground-floor apartment, with the tiniest shower I'd ever seen, though I fit just fine. One thing I didn't notice when reading about Iceland is that their hot water is heated by geothermal activity, which means our showers were A. Heated by VOLCANOS, B. Always hot, and C. Smelled like rotten eggs. The third fact made us so nervous we went out and bought a bunch of bottled water, before we read in a cartoon book down the street at our local landmark bookstore (or "bookmark," obvs) that it's only the hot water that contains sulfur. (A quick check that night confirmed that the cold water is delicious and, to Joel's delight, egg-free.)

Our apartment was much like many of the others in the neighborhood. All the windows seem to have wide sills, and many residents decorate them with knick-knacks, lamps, and in some cases, pets. These decorations were fun to look at while walking around and in some cases, provided us with familiar landmarks.

We also had windows that flipped open from the bottom, to let fresh air in but not precipitation. We saw a lot of these windows cracked as we walked around and wondered why this was necessary, until the overactive radiators (also powered by geothermal activity!) had us cracking some of ours. However, we did not crack the one in the back, which is close to the ground - Anna Maria warned us that if we did, we'd have visiting cats for sure.

Cats are everywhere here, and we've seen some beautiful ones. Most are friendly and come up for a pet. Their presence is well-known and celebrated with t-shirts and postcards proclaiming, "Cats rule this town." Seeing them helped stave off the homesickness for our hairy babies back home.

Overall, we were very happy with where we stayed. The kitchen was stocked not only with tea and coffee, but also with butter (oh god the butter), bread and jam. But the best part of all was the bed: memory foam with a cushy comforter on top. We both had trouble leaving it every morning. It was like sleeping on a cloud, if a cloud felt more like it looked and not like cold water vapor. If I remember literally nothing else from this trip (which is impossible), I will always remember how it felt to sink into that bed.

If the dead goose was a bad omen of something, it must have been so subtle we missed it.