2022 - Iceland

Day 1 - Reykjavik

Like a mother who forgets how horrible childbirth is, I entered the plane last night thinking, "It's a red-eye flight - I'll just go to sleep and when I wake up, we'll be there!" OMG. Either flying is truly becoming more horrible... or my age is showing. Regardless, like childbirth, the tortuous experience began to fade as soon as we landed.

We flew through Immigration & Customs (very smooth if you jump all of those hurdles ahead of time), grabbed our rental car, and drove into Reykjavik to explore the city until we could check into our apartment. At this time of year, the sun doesn't begin to rise until about 10 am, so when we arrived at Hallgrimskirkja Cathedral at 7:30 am, it was pitch dark and it appeared that we had the city to ourselves. It was enchanting (pictures below).

After eating breakfast at the Gray Cat, we walked over to Rainbow Street, visited a bookstore to find a book on elves, and explored the Phallological Museum. We finally hit the wall with exhaustion and headed out to our apartment. It's about 3 miles outside of Reykjavik, with a grocery store and a few restaurants nearby (so far, highly recommend). We crashed for a short nap, and now we're headed out for dinner.

And, of course, we have EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA on the television while we get ready.

Day 2 - Hunting for Elves, Discovery Museum, and Fish & Chips

We started the day at Hellisgerdi in search of the Hidden Folk. This enchanting park is the perfect place to bring your children if you're visiting in the summer (playground, cafe, etc.). Luckily for us, it was cold enough that we had the park to ourselves. We saw a few elfin/fairy homes built by humans... but the best homes were those created by nature. You can see in the pictures below that, obviously, these crags and rocks are home to the King and Queen of magical creatures.

From there were drove to the Perlan, a discovery museum detailing the history of Iceland as well as its geology. [Trigger warning: the time-lapse videos of glaciers melting between 2007 and 2017 is fucking depressing.] In addition to amazing history, the views from the observation deck are worth the price of admission (and the coffee was the best we've had).

From Perlan we drove back into Reykjavik for lunch at Fish & Co. where we had amazing fish & chips and traditional plokkari. By the time we finished lunch at 3 pm, the sun was beginning to set so we went back to the apartment for rest before our Northern Lights tour scheduled for this evening.

Update: Our scheduled Northern Lights Tour was canceled due to an incoming storm. However, the radar showed clear skies here in Reykjavik between 9:00 - 11:00 pm, so we headed out to the Grotta Peninsula to see if we could catch a glimpse. Unfortunately, we didn't see the lights... but we saw yet another part of Iceland that wasn't on our original list.

Day 3 - Unexpected Delights

Last night we received notification that tour of an Ice Cave tour today was cancelled due to the impending winter storm. It was hard to imagine since it was clear and beautiful at the time, but after receiving this email twice from both our rental car company and Iceland Travel, we decided to take the warning seriously:

Please be aware that strong winds are expected all day today and tomorrow in most of the country. It is recommended to change travel plans if you´re driving in dangerous conditions.

As a reminded : hold the doors when you open them! The wind can break the door stopper and blow the door off on the front fender. Check the wind direction and park the car so the door is against the wind. Hold it at all time and open the window so the wind resistance is lower.

When we woke up at 10 am, it was still completely dark outside and we could hear the wind whistling and the snow was blowing sideways. So we bundled up to walk 20 feet to the cafe next door for breakfast. We decided to wait until 2:00 pm and then head into Reykjavik for more indoor exploration. We started at the Cultural House to view art/history, then moved to the National Gallery for an amazing Muggur (Gudmundur Thorsteinsson) exhibit.

From there we walked to Mat Bar for dinner, which was AMAZING.

We have a full day planned for tomorrow (unless it's cancelled), so we are back at the apartment getting to bed early so that we can get up early!

The best part of today is that NONE of it was planned... so we made unexpected memories.

Day 4 - Golden Circle: Thingvellir National Park, Strokkur Geothermal area, Gullfoss Waterfall, Kerid Volcanic Crater, and Blue Lagoon

Today was an adventure in geology! We visited each of the places above and it was an absolute joy to traverse the countryside and really see the land. The beauty of each spot - and walking in the brisk air (and sometimes sleet) was invigorating. More descriptions are captioned with the pictures below.

Iceland - Final Notes

This is the MAP that we created and used to get around.

As is usual in most other nations, the people of Iceland are fluent in at least 2 languages. English is one of those languages.

We normally don't drive on vacation, but Iceland doesn't have ride-sharing or mass transit. So we rented a car and it was really easy to get around! I highly recommend.

Since Iceland is decades ahead of the United States in power (geothermal and solar), the shower water can smell like sulfur. Not a problem - it just takes a minute to get used to it.

Everything is expensive. That's just the price you pay for visiting an island. For example, every single coffee is a special order (Americano, latte, etc.) that contains about 3 oz of coffee. We didn't experience any restaurant that offered coffee refills or pots of coffee. It's about $6 that 3 oz.

There is no tipping at restaurants. Period. You don't even get the option to tip on your credit card slip (when you actually see a slip since the economy is practically paperless). Hospitality workers are paid a decent, living wage and treated as professionals.

Before you leave the states, you can book an appointment for your COVID test. It's free, fast, and efficiently done. There is a barcode attached to your appointment reservation, and when you show up for your appointment you show them the barcode and your passport. We waited about 5 minutes for the test, and received the results via email about 25 minutes later.