While I was living and working in the best city in the world, it was kind of en vogue for New Yorkers in the know to sample the raucous night life of Reykjavik on whirlwind weekend trips. Well, flight time was under six hours and carbon footprint issues did not yet matter.

For me, flying home to see my family in Germany usually meant boarding Lufthansa in JFK and touching down after an 8-hour-flight in Frankfurt. Just once, fortunateIy, I flew a different route and did a stopover in this Land of Fire & Ice to immerse myself into the Blue Lagoon. Driving on the spectacular Iceland Ring Road was a lonely affair back in 2003. Nowadays in summer, a friend told me, there are almost more campervans than Icelanders.