Late last night, I left RDU with my dear friends (chosen family!), Ken and Pauline, to head abroad. The journey will include Iceland, London, Paris, and then more time in Iceland!
We arrived at Keflavik Airport in Iceland shortly after 6:00am local time (2:00am body time) this morning. We boarded the FlyBus to get us to Reykjavik where we’ll spend the next few days. We stopped briefly at our hotel and dropped our bags, knowing that we needed to hit the ground running, at least for a bit. We got recommendations from the front desk for some breakfast spots and headed out to find them. We quickly realized that reading/recognizing/speaking Icelandic street names would be a challenge. We got pretty turned around with the map the person at the hotel front desk had marked up for us, but eventually we found our way to The Laundromat Cafe. Eggs, bacon, and sourdough toast (plus caffeine!) hit the spot. It was a pretty quiet meal because we were hungry and exhausted.
Then we made our way up the hill to a famous church… stopping in various gift shops on the way. Rainbow Street (It has a much longer, Icelandic name!) leads to the church, Hallgrímskirkja, which was absolutely beautiful.
We went inside to walk around, and then Ken and I made our way to the top for a spectacular view of the city!
After seeing the church, we meandered our way through the streets of Reykjavik, enjoying the sights and taking note of the architecture and residential neighborhoods. We passed by the monument to the Unknown Bureaucrat… Iceland’s tribute to its “thankless civil servants.”
We stopped to sit down for a rest and a drink, and then a call came from our hotel that our rooms were ready. We headed back and took a rest for a couple of hours. Then we got together to make a plan for the evening and prepared to head out for an early dinner. Despite this sign…
The pizza was delicious!
We capped off the evening by going in a few more shops (needed to taste the chocolate licorice - spoiler alert: not our favorite) and then hung out in our hotel bar until we could say we successfully made it to 8pm before going upstairs to blog and sleep!
There’s a new stamp in my passport… which means it was another banner day!
Great description of a great day. It’s almost like I was there.
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