Latest / Explore Iceland Travel Podcast / E.1: Welcome to Explore Iceland – Why I Started This Podcast
Transcript
- Monika: Welcome to the very first episode of the Explore Iceland podcast. You may be wondering why should you listen to me? What can a Polish woman living in the US teach you about Iceland? Well, I hope a lot because I love Iceland. My family would say I'm obsessed. And I've been there quite a few times and I keep going back for more, and I keep planning more trips. And on each of those trips, I discover new amazing things to share with you and even more new things to put on my to do next time in Iceland list. And Iceland is the country that inspired me to start my travel blog, planpackexplorer.com, and now this podcast. Why? Because Iceland was a tough trip to plan for me. And I consider myself an experienced trip planner. As I said, I grew up in Europe and I live in the US, so since my early twenties, I've been traveling back and forth, just first with my husband and later with my family and our kids. We visited our family in Poland and also visited other countries often enough that a trip to Europe wasn't much different for me to plan than any other trip within the US. Until we decided to go to Iceland. That was a hard trip to plan for me. Probably because I actually did it completely backwards and opposite to how I normally plan my trips. Let me explain. It was twenty twenty two and we were trying to make up for lost travel time due to COVID, so we sat on a couch planning the US trip that didn't happen in twenty twenty. And as we were looking at airfare, accommodations, itinerary, my husband said out of the blue, you know, we could do this or we could just go to Iceland. Well He didn't have to say this twice. So this is where the backwards part comes in. We had the destination, the number of days we could spend there, and no knowledge on how to fill them. I knew nothing about Iceland at the time. And let me tell you, it took a lot of research to put together our itinerary. There is so much to see and do in Iceland that it can easily get very overwhelming. But we got it done. We booked our flights. and the apartment and the car rental, and we thought we were good to go when the universe decided to intervene. We were in Poland for a family celebration just a few weeks before then, and our return flight got cancelled. It's a long story. But we got home three days later than originally planned, set to postpone our Iceland trip to the next year. Nope. We were not able to move our tickets for a slew of reasons, so we decided to just go for it. Then our son got sick. Luckily nothing serious or contagious so he was clear to fly. Then what of our dogs got sick? Again nothing serious, but we had to find a different caretaker for both of them. Then the volcano started erupting and all I remember thinking on our way to the airport was Is the universe trying to tell me not to go on this trip? But we went. And we loved it from the moment we stepped off the plane. After we had some laughs of time. at our rental car but that's a story for another episode. We actually hiked to that volcano to see the lava flowing and it was amazing. Needless to say, Iceland stole my heart. It's my happy place. We started planning our second trip immediately after we came back from the first one, so be prepared to just fall in love with Iceland. I did and I just keep going back. As you can probably tell I love talking about Iceland and I'm thrilled to take you along on our journey together through this podcast. In each episode, I'll be sharing with you everything you need to know to plan your trip, and everything you need to know to plan more trips. And share my mistakes so you don't have to make your own. And share some stories so you can have a good laugh here and there. So if you're still listening and you've stuck with me so far, thank you. I want to invite you to keep listening so we can plan your Iceland adventure together. All you will have left to do is pack your bags and go explore Iceland.