After our long travel ordeal, we arrived at Keflavik airport around 4 p.m., so it hardly counts as a first day.
Art in front of Keflavik Airport.
We rented a car from Blue Car Rental. They will pick you up at the airport. Due to our travel delays, there was some confusion in our pick up time, and they weren’t at the airport to meet us. No big deal — it was a fairly short walk to their office.
Many of the roads in Iceland are “gravel” (more hard packed dirt with pot holes than gravel) and if you are going to travel on any of these roads, you need to rent a 4 WD vehicle. We ended up with a Toyota Land Cruiser and we were very happy with it. We loaded up our luggage, hopped in the car and drove the 40 minutes to Reykjavik.
It’s an interesting drive across the lava fields and a stark introduction to Iceland. It was rainy the day we arrived so we couldn’t see the beautiful mountains in the distance. We arrived at our hotel, Centerhotel Thingholt, around 6 p.m. Our rooms were very nice and the hotel is at one end of the main shopping street, Laugavegur. By now, most of the shops were closed, but we decided to walk down the main street anyway, and window shop.
Along the way, we found a pizza/Italian restaurant for dinner. Not really what I had in mind for a first meal in Iceland, but we were tired and it was handy. After dinner, we wandered down to the harbor. It was 9:00 p.m., but still plenty of sunlight to walk around. We stopped to take a picture of The Sun Voyager.
A few pictures from the harbor. Reykjavik is known for it’s many colored buildings.
A little farther down the harbor is the Harpa Concert Hall. It has only been open for a few years. We went inside and walked around — there’s a nice little museum shop, but we were there after hours so it was closed. We had to console ourselves by posing for a Charlie’s Angels shot,
By now, it was around 11 p.m. so we walked along a few city streets and went back to the hotel. Along the way, we found a fun heated pole that looks like it was put there as a place for cold visitors to get warm.
The sun set around 11:30 each evening and rose around 3:30 each morning, but it never really got dark. I think I drove my family a little crazy — if it’s light outside, I wanted to see places. I really had a hard time adjusting to the fact that we needed to go to bed in daylight!
| Iceland Home | Day 2 >>