Iceland to Israel

Our journey from Reykjavik to Jerusalem was tolerable.
Alarm at 5am, out into the morning drizzle, refuel the car and then a 40 minute drive to Keflavík airport, return the car, wait for shuttle to airport proper, spend the last of the bit of Icelandic Kroners.
The flight to Helsinki was pleasant enough with the whole row to ourselves. A few glimpses of Iceland and its snow capped peaks was seen through the cloud.
By the time we had reached the Norwegian coastline the weather had cleared to a fine day and it was interesting to see the thousands of fjords and lakes in central Norway transition to more forests and farmland as we passed over Sweden.
We had a few hours to kill at Helsinki airport before our next flight to Ben Gurion so we utilised the Priority Pass lounge to get some food, drink and Wifi as none of this is provided enroute for either leg. It seems Finnair are just as stingy as British Airways.

I was thankful for noise cancelling headsets to drown out the endlessly repeating ‘Baby Shark’ song coming from the tablet of the child in front, but the headsets were doing nothing to dampen the thuds from the seat-kicking child behind. Thankfully it was only 4.5 hours and we kept busy with writing, reading etc as well as a little shuteye as circumstances would allow.
The route did of course keep us well clear of Ukrainian airspace- see the screenshots showing that nothing flies that route.
The lights of Cyprus were visible off to the left as we commenced our descent and we landed at about 11.35pm.
Electronic passport processing made entry a breeze with the little blue Visa printed out and no questions asked about ‘why don’t you want your passport stamped’ as happened in the past.
Outside into the humidity and negotiations / wrangling with a taxi driver got him down from ILS 400 to 275 for the fare into Jerusalem.
All went smoothly, access to apartment just next to Ben Yehuda street gained 1.45hrs after landing- pretty good all things considered.
It’s nice being ‘back home’.Read more