Coming home.

Scribbling this on our bittersweet flight from Reykjavik to Dulles with my daughter (and website partner) and granddaughter.

One regret: I wish we had more time in Iceland. Three days gave us a delicious taste of this charming country with a love of unpronounceable names but it wasn’t nearly long enough. I want to come back in warmer weather and do some hiking in the Icelandic countryside.

Still, I missed my family at home and - believe it or not - work.

A word on traveling with children. Specifically, grandchildren.

As I found with my own kids, the age at which they become terrific traveling companions and not wailing nuisances varies wildly.

That said, eight may be the perfect age. Our second grader is game for almost anything and is willing to try different foods (key when you leave the country). Jet lag had no effect on her and she woke up eager to go every morning and didn’t run out of gas before we did at night.

I apologize to her teacher in advance if she dozes off in class today. Of course, traveling IS educational. This child had never used foreign money - in fact, she was surprised to learn about currencies - and converting pounds and then krona into dollars was a math lesson for all of us!

We were careful to include activities we knew she’d enjoy (the Harry Potter Walking Tour of London wouldn’t be in my list of top 1,000 things to do there, but watching her enthusiasm and seeing the sights turned out to be more fun than I imagined). She, in turn, surprised us by her fascination with venues we didn’t think would hold her attention. Churchill’s War Rooms, for instance, were a hit and we had to drag her out of the Crown Jewels exhibit at the Tower of London because she was determined to read every plaque.

In Iceland our little cold-weather lover had to be reminded repeatedly to put her coat on, while I shivered under layers of clothing.

The Northern Lights

Best of all, our pint-sized companion stayed awake for what was the highlight of the trip for me: the Northern Lights. We set out at 10 p.m. from downtown Reykjavik in a small minibus group with a guide who was studying weather reports and aurora forecasts on his tablet as he predicted where the light show might be visible.

An hour later, as we gazed at the spectacular sky dancing with colors, I told our little sky gazer how lucky she was. Of the billions of people on earth very few ever get to see the aurora borealis. I waited all my life to see it and here she was - at 8! - getting a gander at nature’s light show!

Northern Lights trips are notoriously fickle and there’s no guarantee you’ll even see the Lights. The trips from Reykjavik had been cancelled the previous three nights due to heavy cloud cover and it had been partly cloudy all that day. Not only did our guide zero in on a clear location, but after oohing and aahing at what we thought was a dazzling 30-minute display he drove us to another location where the sky suddenly exploded into a dome of color from horizon to horizon that left us speechless.

Magnus, our guide, seemed as thrilled as we were, “I have goose blisters on my arms,” he said excitedly, pulling up his sleeves to show us.

Later, he told us that in 10 years of stalking the Northern Lights he’d only seen that dome-effect two to three times. Sometimes the colors are richer, he said, but a full-sky illumination is fairly rare.

Advice to see the Lights: If you’re heading to Iceland (or any points far north) specifically to see the Lights, plan your trip around the phases of the moon. The brighter the moon, the less likely it will be that you’ll see anything at all. We went during a waning crescent. Serendipitous, since our trip was planned around my granddaughter’s spring break, not a lunar calendar.

On Saturday, our last full day, we went to the Blue Lagoon, named one of the 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic. It’s a vast, steaming thermal pool, heated to around 38C (about 100F) from water 2,000 feet below the surface of the earth. We spent 3 1/2 hours soaking in the blue, silica-rich water and none of us wanted to leave. (Hey there’s a float-up bar that serves smoothies, slushes and alcoholic beverages, what’s not to like?) Bobbing around us, some wearing wool hats and earmuffs against the cold, were people of all ages from around the world; men, women, young couples, gaggles of girls and a few small children wearing floaties.

It may be the only swimming hole in the world where the lifeguards wear snowsuits.

The Blue Lagoon is very close to the volcano that began erupting a couple of months ago and that seismologists say is about to blow again. As we signed into the Lagoon they warned us that if there was an earthquake or a sudden eruption - as there had been two weeks earlier - there would be an evacuation. Just follow the directions and sirens and stay calm.

Right.

There was no sign of any seismic activity and it was an indescribably splendid way to unwind from a frenetic trip to two countries in nine days.

I’d do it all again tomorrow!

Nothing is more boring than looking at someone else’s vacation photos, but what the heck, here are a few more from our trip.

Enjoy or just scroll on by!

Photo by S.G.L.