- After landing in Iceland on March 12, I learned that President Trump had announced a travel suspension from most of Europe to the US.
- Citizens and legal residents like me were exempt, but I was nervous about getting back as I hold an expired green card while I wait for my status to be adjusted.
- I couldn’t get hold of the airline so I stayed for my vacation, checked for updates regularly, and booked a back-up route home via the UK, where I have family, in case I got stuck.
- My flight ended up being canceled but I was rebooked onto another leaving at the same time but returning at a different airport that ended up being closer to home.
- Though my green card held up check-in a bit, I was able to travel on the almost empty flight; I had my temperature checked outside the plane on landing, and was through customs and at home in record time.
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Iceland has been on my must-see-in-a-lifetime list ever since I watched “Game of Thrones.”
But my recent trip to the land of ice and fire didn’t go quite as planned.
Moments after my flight landed on March 12, I learned that while I was in the air watching “Miss Congeniality,” President Trump announced a travel suspension from most of Europe to the US in an effort to curb the spread of coronavirus.
On the tarmac at Keflavik International Airport, I switched airplane mode off to find texts from my husband with news of the travel ban prohibiting visitors from the Schengen Area, made up of 26 European countries – including Iceland.
"You might've heard about this. Don't worry," he wrote, adding that it might not be easy to get back, but I should be OK because I'm a legal permanent resident; US citizens and legal residents are exempt from the restrictions. In the very worst case, he suggested flying back via the UK, where I have family, in case I got stuck.
Traveling alone to Reykjavik, where I was meeting a friend from the UK later that day, I knew I needed to stay calm and rein in the initial feeling of alarm that hit me as I read the news.
Suddenly, I felt even more isolated than I had on the almost half-empty flight and in the eerily quiet terminal at Newark Liberty International Airport hours before, and where I'll admit I started feeling a little uneasy about getting on a plane.
Inside the airport in Keflavik, I zoomed through arrivals and past a cardboard cutout of a man in a hazmat suit reminding visitors to wash their hands, and headed through customs to baggage reclaim, where I found representatives for Icelandair to ask about my flight home the following Tuesday.
I also noticed that I had a text from a public Icelandic service telling me to call a phone number if I arrived with symptoms after visiting an infected country.
I was worried my return flight would be canceled, and started mentally devising a plan in the event that I couldn't get back to the US from Iceland.
Understandably, the three staff members at the Icelandair desk knew as much as I did. They told me they were waiting to have a staff meeting where they would make a plan following the travel restrictions, and advised me to keep checking the Icelandair website for more information. One representative kindly checked that my email address was in the airline's system so I would receive updates there as well.
As I waited for my bag, I listened for American accents around me and asked a few people about their plans, though the majority of people on my flight seemed to be from Iceland coming home. The group of Americans I spoke with were in disbelief and said they planned on completing their trip unless restrictions tightened or flights started getting canceled.
I thought about doing the same - I didn't want to make my friend cancel her travel plans, or abandon her in Iceland - but I was worried I might miss my chance to go back if I left it too late.
Although I'm a legal resident married to a US citizen, and therefore shouldn't have a problem getting back into the country, I was in a bit of a unique situation: I was traveling with an expired green card.
For anyone unfamiliar with the US immigration system, this is totally normal for legal residents during the application process; I travel with a government-issued notice that explains my situation and grants me the ability to travel into the US for 18 months from the expiration date on my green card.
Though I'm good to use the notice for another seven months, I've found it's not always easy traveling with this document. While US border control and customs officials are familiar with the notice, it often confuses airline staff at international airports, and in my experience, it sometimes leads to a lengthy check-in involving managers being called over and photocopies of my visa paperwork being made. My status makes traveling internationally a bit more complicated, so the restrictions only added another layer of anxiety.
On the shuttle to Reykjavik, the sunrise cast pink and orange light over snow-topped mountains on one side of the bus; on the other was the ocean. It took me a while to actually look outside the window - I spent most of the 45-minute drive glued to my phone reading all that I could about the restrictions, browsing flights, and messaging concerned friends and family to tell them I was fine and figuring out a plan.
A few rows in front of me, I overheard one American traveler on the phone, presumably to Icelandair, saying he needed to cancel the 4:45 p.m. flight he booked instantly after seeing the news and before realizing US citizens were exempt from the restrictions.
"Trump wanted his travel ban, that's what this is," another American traveler sitting nearby told me, shaking her head.
Not wanting to abandon my travel partner, I decided that I'd stay in Iceland for the time being and monitor updates.
On the bus, I decided that if I needed to cut my trip short at some point, I would, but I didn't want to waste the time and money spent planning the vacation or disappoint my friend who was arriving that night. As a back-up, I booked a flight from Iceland to the UK and then from London to New York, for later in the week. When the UK was added to the travel restrictions on March 14, I kept the bookings anyway so I could get to my family if I really couldn't get home, or my expired green card posed an issue.
Checking into our Airbnb, which had been upgraded for free from an apartment with two beds to one with six - presumably, because there had been a cancelation - I met our kind host who greeted me with a smile (and not a handshake). "Because of the virus, I have upgraded you," he said, before showing me the layout of the place, how to work the TV - which, of course, was showing news about COVID-19 - and mentioning that four Icelanders recently tested positive for the coronavirus after returning from Denver, Colorado.
Knowing that it's possible to transmit the virus without showing symptoms, according to a report from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, I hoped that I wasn't unknowingly bringing the virus with me from the US. (The day I left, my office had implemented a mandatory work-from-home policy as New York City and the state began seeing a growing number of cases.)
With this in mind, I tried my best to be cautious during the trip, following the proper hygiene protocol, washing my hands frequently for 20 seconds, and carrying hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, and tissues. My friend and I also ended up staying "home" at our Airbnb most nights and watching "Love Is Blind," keeping ourselves away from crowds. Not that there were many crowds to be found.
While it was noticeably quiet in Reykjavik, life and business seemed to be going on, with cafes, restaurants, and shops open.
I was surprised that the activities we had booked - small-group tours of the Golden Circle and south coast, and horse-riding and Northern Lights experiences - were still planned to go ahead. They had, however, been customized to comply with measures to help contain the spread.
For one day trip, this included our group being split into two buses; for another excursion, we were transferred onto a larger bus so we could keep a good amount of distance from others. One driver told us he usually handed out Icelandic treats, but with the virus, his tour company wasn't offering that. (Thankfully, I had half a delicious cinnamon bun from Braud & Co. left in my purse.)
I even saw tape cordoning off a row of seats near the driver on one bus, while the rest of us sat quite far apart. And all the buses, like the attractions we visited, had hand sanitizer.
Everywhere we went, it seemed mindful considerations had been made.
At a restaurant we visited for brunch, the staff had moved self-serve condiments behind the counter and a waitress wearing gloves doled out small packages of hummus and jam. And in the bathroom at Thingvellir National Park - and in nearly all the public bathrooms I saw - there were printed handwashing instructions.
On the second-to-last day of our trip, measures were ramped up and included a mandatory six-foot distance between tables at restaurants and the ban of gatherings of more than 100 people.
Later, I learned that police in the country, which I was told is virtually free of crime, were helping find people exposed to those who have tested positive for the coronavirus as part of the nation's effort to contain the spread. As NBC's Willem Marx and Mac William Bishop report, Iceland has a team of detectives known as "contact tracers" tasked with finding people exposed to the virus to ensure they remain in quarantine.
I was impressed at how Iceland seemed to be taking preventive measures early to keep people safe.
Though I was determined to not let it ruin our time in Iceland, I couldn't stop thinking about how I would get home.
I checked Icelandair's website for updates a few times a day, which advised travelers not to call unless they had a flight coming up within 72 hours; understandably, the airline was being inundated with calls. I expected my flight to be canceled and thought I'd need to resort to my plan B going back via the UK.
But when I bumped into an American couple at the Saga Museum, they told me their Icelandair flight to Boston was still scheduled for the following day. They said they'd finally gotten through to the airline on the phone after three hours of being on hold and had a long day of travel ahead; they lived in Mississippi and would take a second flight from Boston to New Orleans, followed by a two-hour drive home.
After speaking with the American couple, I felt cautiously optimistic that my flight would work out, keeping my back-up travel bookings just in case. It helped that Iceland is a beautiful place and I was able to take my mind off things a bit and enjoy myself. Of course, I still felt on edge about traveling back, but I knew there was nothing I could do except stay calm and deal with any issues as they came up.
Once I was within the 72-hour window before my trip, I tried and failed to get through to Icelandair a couple of times, but I also understood that they were likely dealing with tons of concerned customers.
Then, a couple of days before my flight, which was scheduled for March 17, Icelandair posted an update to its website that it would be running its flights scheduled on March 14, 15, and 16. Flights to a few US airports including Denver International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport had been affected, the update said, but there was no mention of routes to Newark being impacted.
The day before I was due to leave, however, I got an email and text from the airline informing me that there was a change to my flight.
It had been canceled, but the airline had automatically rebooked me onto a flight leaving at the same time, though arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport and not Newark. (Living in Queens, where I'm closer to JFK, and wanting to avoid public transportation, this made my journey home a lot easier.)
Still, on March 17, I felt a little nervous. I knew that plans could still change, I had my expired green card with me, and before the airport we had one more stop: the Blue Lagoon.
Iceland's most popular tourist attraction is about a 20-minute drive from Keflavik, so when we booked our tickets weeks in advance we imagined we would be joining the many travelers who typically plan a visit to the Blue Lagoon on their way to or from the airport. But when we got there, it was almost deserted.
You could have heard a pin drop outside the entrance. There was a short line to get the wristbands used as locker keys, and the changing rooms and showers - where the national ritual of showering naked with soap and water before going into the public baths was upheld - were far from crowded. In the lagoon itself, it was a little busier with a few people congregating around the swim-up bar with colorful drinks in hand while trying to keep a distance from each other, but it wasn't difficult to find a quiet nook.
Staff handed out the complimentary silica masks wearing gloves, visitor numbers were regulated, and we were told there were limited services - no massages or beauty treatments - as a precautionary measure.
On our last day, it felt strange to see the Blue Lagoon close to empty. The mood seemed to have shifted, and it felt like the right time to be leaving.
Swathes of steam rising from the lagoon into the air gave it an eerie atmosphere, and while we were very aware of how weird it was to see the Blue Lagoon empty, and with our trips back home and back to reality looming, we decided to try to enjoy ourselves - and we did.
A few days after our visit, on March 23, the Blue Lagoon closed its doors. At the time of writing, it isn't expected to reopen until after April 30.
Getting to the airport felt like a relief, but I knew the next hurdle came at check-in with my expired green card.
I immediately checked the board and my flight was still there and scheduled to take off. Like at Newark, the check-in lines were short. When I got to the counter and showed my passport, green card, and notice, the Icelandair staff member assisting me consulted a couple of colleagues and brought over her manager.
None seemed to have seen a notice like mine before, and the manager made a phone call to immigration to ask about the document.
After about 15 minutes of waiting, my document was determined to be valid and I was given the green light to travel.
Dropping my bag, and breathing a huge sigh of relief, I said goodbye to my friend who was catching her EasyJet flight to the UK - the same flight I'd booked as a precaution, but no longer needed - in a few hours. I planned to see about canceling my ticket at the EasyJet desk but it wasn't open yet, and I tried with no luck to get through on the phone before my flight took off.
Through security, I didn't waste time and went straight to the gate as soon as it was announced. There weren't many people sitting there, but the line grew quickly when boarding began.
Getting onto the plane, it was much larger than the one I took on the way there, which had three seats on each side.
I sanitized my seat area as best I could and was relieved to find there was no one sitting next to me. Besides a few people scattered around the plane, it looked almost empty to me from where I sat. It was certainly the quietest flight I've ever taken.
Despite the strange atmosphere, and uncertainty around the fate of travel in the near future, the cabin crew onboard was incredibly friendly and helpful and continued with the in-flight service as usual.
As we walked onto the plane, airline staff handed us a form we were asked to complete on the flight and hand over to those administering the medical screening at JFK. I completed the health declaration to say I had been to a Schengen country, that I'd had no symptoms in the last 24 hours or knowingly been in contact with a person known to be infected in the last 14 days.
Cabin crew kept us informed with what to expect at JFK as we neared the end of the flight and told us that there would be people wearing masks and visors to take our temperature after we got off the plane.
At JFK, I braced myself for the prospect of long lines but found that screenings were taking place right outside the plane and not in the customs hall.
Having seen photos of long lines and crowded customs halls at US airports, I was nervous that I would be walking into one of those nightmare images. But I was relieved to find that temperatures were being taken right outside the plane by men in masks, visors, and a getup that looked a bit like a hazmat suit.
I handed my declaration of health to one of the men, while another held up a no-contact digital thermometer by my forehead and cheeks to take my temperature. I was at 96 degrees.
I then quickly went through to customs and was at the front of the short line in record time, handing over my passport and green card to the border security agent. In a matter of seconds, I was at baggage reclaim with my suitcase in hand and calling an Uber home.
The scene outside JFK was weirdly serene.
I easily found my Uber, and with fewer cars on the road the drive to my apartment took 20 minutes. Usually, it takes a good 45 minutes to get back from the airport.
Getting home to my husband, and heading into quarantine, I knew I'd likely miss all the open space I was lucky to have experienced in Iceland. I probably won't be back in Europe for quite some time, and I'm glad I got to spend a few days with my best friend in one of the most beautiful places in the world. But it was really good to be home where I've been social distancing ever since.