[music] “Traveling by yourself is a really good way to get to know yourself and to get to know yourself in strange environments, and, I think, a really good way to understand the world and understand how you interact with it. I’m Jada Yuan. I’m the 52 Places Traveler for The New York Times and you are hitting me about one-third of the way into the trip. [music] I have spent the last four months going up and down the Americas. Reykjavik takes me to Europe. Solo traveling is tougher than I thought. When it was really hard to balance traveling by myself and doing work at the same time, and not having anyone I knew around me. [music] I was specifically looking forward to having Lucas as my companion because he’s done this job on a lot of levels as the Frugal Traveler. So I’m just able to pick his brain.” “Cheers to you, Jada Yuan, 52 Place Traveler for The New York Times.” “And cheers to you, Lucas Peterson, Frugal Traveler for The New York Times.” “It’s such a pleasure to meet you.” “I know. I mean, don’t you —” “Your response is, ‘I know,’ not ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you too.’” “I was in agreement — pleasure to meet you.” [laughter] “Anyways, we’re here in Iceland. We have met for the first time. We are in downtown Reykjavik. The whole thing is going to be very exciting.” “Yeah. We’re going to write about it together.” “You’re really going to get to know us, probably more than you’d like. And we can’t wait to get started. Jada’s got the hardest job in the world. I’m incredibly impressed. I’m incredibly impressed that she’s still alive and working. I know that my job gets difficult and I don’t have to go from place to place straight away for an entire year. I get to go home.” “It’s about four days in each way. So it’s a lot. I have not had a lot of downtime and so I just have to figure out ways to take relaxation points within my day. [singing] Can you feel the love tonight?” [singing] “Tonight?” [laughter] “You said you sing that for karaoke. I know you sing it louder than that. Lucas is a terrific travel companion. He’s just — he’s really fun and he’s light in places that I’m not. I have a tendency to want to see everything and gobble up everything, and then, like, I’m disappointed if we don’t get to something. And Lucas is just chiller about all of it. [singing] “How I love [inaudible] … I love to hack and to serve little fish. Chop, chop, chop.” “No, I really like — I just want you to keep doing that please. Everywhere I go in this country, just seems to exponentially build upon the last place that we went. We started driving, and we hit a lava field covered in moss. And then an hour later, you come upon a lava field where there’s nothing you see but lava fields. And then you come upon a black sand beach and like, with a glacier on the side. It just kept getting better and better. Everything in Iceland is so expensive. A lot of the food offerings were pretty expensive and some of them were pretty tourist driven. We did have a good hot dog. You can get good hot dogs anywhere, but you can get them at gas stations also. And you could also at any gas station you go to, you can get a soft-serve ice cream dipped in chocolate. So Lucas and I had ice cream for breakfast because we just couldn’t resist. We went to the Langhus Farm to ride horses. The horses live in a stable right by the sea and I rode a horse named Hudor. And Hudor and I went out into this fjords on the sea.” [laughing] “So, for them to move, we say ‘Hop hop.’” “Hop hop, yeah?” “Superlatives like jaw-dropping and breathtaking are overused, but I think Iceland is one of the few places where it’s actually apt. It’s just incredible thing after incredible thing to see and so much variety. [music] Traveling alone, unfortunately, is a necessity of the job. The downside is it becomes crushingly lonely. Traveling with someone gives such a pleasure.” “Lucas Peterson, Frugal Traveler here, has taken us on a little bit of a detour —” “A little bit of a detour — Because then you get to share things and then you get to see something super cool, and turn to that person and be, ‘Hey, you also see that thing that’s super cool?’” “Oh! Look at this thing! Stop! Wow!” “I believe that travel is good for the world. I believe that people should travel more. And I believe if people did travel more, the world would be a better place.” “It’s been hitting me more and more that I think this is an opportunity that I’m never going to have again. And then I have to take it just with as much gusto as I can. So I can’t believe that I’m in Iceland and that this is part of my job. And I felt really grateful for this being something that I get to do in my life.” [music]