Welcome to Iceland. Now, get on the bus

Everything you always wanted to know about your first 45 minutes in Iceland.

Being a part of the international jet set is so hard.

Especially since that weekend in Berlin, after which our bosses at Iceland Express closed our expense account, and we keep finding ourselves onboard the Flybus all the time. (Farewell, sweet limo drivers!)

Still, listening to our fellow travelers on the bus for those 45 minutes from the airport to the city can be quite amusing. But in the spirit of our great hero, Rosa Parks, here are a few hints and tips to y’all who are taking the Flybus to town:

• First of all, there’s a chance you will be carrying bottled water. It’s probably the worst tourist trap of them all. Why not buy some Champagne in the duty-free store instead? It will make the ride much more interesting.
• You may mistake the first village you drive through, Keflavík, for Reykjavík. We do appreciate that you think we are a small and an adorable nation, but we do have a more decent capital than this. Give us a break.
• On a clear day, when the Snæfellsjökull glacier can be seen in the far distance, you may be tempted to say how much you really want to go on a glacier — even drive on it. That’s all good and well, but unless you want to find yourself in a deep gully, Jules Vernes style, we hope you’re an excellent driver who knows the ins and outs of your particular glacier of choice, and that you have one of those monster trucks at your disposal, and that you have the licence to drive it. (But don’t worry. Even if you don’t have all these things going for you, there are plenty of companies just dying to separate you from your money help you.)
• On your right, as you head into town, you will see steam rising from the lava. Fear not: we aren’t, like one ten year old boy proposed, making an army of Orcs (although that would probably solve a lot of problems regarding ‘the war on terror’). It’s not even the ‘hot water source for Reykjavik,’ like his father told him. It’s only the Blue Lagoon. And yes, we know you know what that is. And yes, we will get to it later.
• Lava. Yes. The landscape is like you just landed on the moon. The rough lava stretches almost as far as you can see. Apparently NASA trained their astronauts here before they went to the moon. That means the moonwalk could have been invented in Iceland. How neat it that?
• The rather large glass dome on top of that hill you pass once you’re finally in Reykjavík is not a mosque. Not yet at least. For the moment it’s just a fancy restaurant resting on top of hot water tanks. You know, the usual.