Iceland - Travel & Day 1
The day was finally here and Des and I were heading to Iceland. We started our trip in Saskatoon and Westjet blessed us with an upgrade to Premium, at least for the first leg! The flight from Calgary to Iceland was on a Max 8 and we had extended comfort seats. They were ok, and I managed to get a little bit of sleep.
We landed around 8am and cool weather welcomed us, we made it quickly through passport control and quickly grabbed our rental car from Avis. We had rented a Jimney, it was cute, but pretty small. I also quickly had to remember how to drive stick, it had been a minute. Des doesn't know how, so I would be the driver for the week. It was fun, since I had to relearn and go through a bunch of traffic circles.
We headed into Reykjavik and did some wandering around. We parked right next to the church, we didn't go inside, but it was beautiful to admire from the outside.
We spent some more time wandering around the city and admired the buildings. We made a stop at Braud and I had the most delicious raspberry croissant. I would go back just to have another one of those!
We made our way down to the water to admire The Sun Voyageur statue.
After wandering around a bit more we made our way out of the city and towards our accommodations for our first night. We made some random stops at some places that caught our attention.
We made a stop at Thingvellir National Park and went for our first mini hike. We were starting to fade, but enjoyed the hike and it gave us our 15th wind!
The skies had cleared and we ended up with a really beautiful day.
We also made a stop at a shopping centre, but we didn't really stop to shop, they have a spot showing the continental divide! So I sort of stood in North America and Europe at the same time.
It was finally time to head to our accommodations and it was so special! We were staying in an igloo! Not a frozen one, but a bubble that was clear and we could admire the sky.
Once we got settled we laid down and both ended up taking a nap! I woke up because I felt like I was boiling, guess that is what happens when you are sleeping in a clear bubble with little airflow!
Now became the most difficult decision of the day... what to have for dinner? In Iceland it is common to get dinner from in the gas station, they have small restaurants. We went by a few and I just wasn't feeling any of them, honestly I think I was just overtired and couldn't decide. We ended up driving back to Selfoss and found the coolest looking food hall.
These are my $36 tacos!
At least they were tasty!
We headed back to enjoy our igloo. There are wooden partitions between each one and they have a curtain you can pull to give you privacy in the back. The other interesting thing is that we didn't have our own bathroom, that upgrade was pricy, so we had just a couple minute walk to the shared facilities, with toilets, showers and a microwave. It wasn't a big deal.
I tried to pack carry on for this trip, but I just couldn't figure it out, so instead of hauling in my suitcase each night, I just left it in the back of the Jimney and used another bag to bring in what I needed each night. It worked well.
We didn't get treated to any Northern Lights, but the views were still pretty. We didn't stay awake for long though!