Iceland is a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean with a population of around 360,000. Though the entire country has the population of a small American city, it accommodates hundreds of thousands of tourists at any given time, making places like Reykjavík feel urban and cultured.
The romance of sleeping on a 100-year-old sailing ship in the frigid Reykjavík harbor sounds like a decent-enough idea. It wasn’t. It was awful: cramped, smelly, and a bit cruddy-feeling. I’m a New Englander through and through, so communal spaces make me uncomfortable. I need my privacy. This is most apparent when I’m forced to share a bathroom with a bunch of other humans I don’t know.