Iceland – Waterfalls and Sagas

Flying first class was way too expensive, but we still wanted to be comfortable for an overnight flight so we purchased the middle seat between us. That way we had an entire row to ourselves. On a completely booked flight, we got a lot of angry looks when we started to spread out in our row. Totally worth it!

The flight was about 7.5 hours from Seattle to Reykjavik. It was uneventful. I slept a bit but it wasn’t like flying in business class in a lie-flat seat. My husband, of course, didn’t sleep. When we arrived in Reyjavik, we were both pretty tired. Fortunately, immigration in Reykjavik is a breeze! Most of the passengers were transferring onto Europe so we passed through after just a few minutes.

I had prescheduled a ride for us to get from the airport to the hotel. The guy picked us up and we were on our way to the hotel. We were both looking forward to a nap once we arrived. And yes, I had told the hotel that we’d be arriving early. The hotel was a bit unusual when I booked it. They had two properties in the downtown area and the front desk was at one of them. I’m positive that I booked that hotel so that we could talk to someone upon arrival. However, when we got to the hotel, the driver pulled our bags out of the car, dropped them at the top of a few steps in front of a locked door, said “OK, thanks” and got in his car to drive away. My husband and I looked at each other and were like “what are we supposed to do!” We stopped the driver before he drove away. He got out of his car (a bit frustrated with us), walked up the stairs, and started talking to someone on an intercom next to the door. They opened the door remotely for him and he pulled our bags into a little landing area that was apparently the entrance for about 6 rooms of the hotel. We asked if we could get into our room and they said that it wouldn’t be ready until at least noon. When we asked what we were supposed to do, the driver shrugged his shoulders and said that our stuff would be safe. This was confusing for us since people in 6 hotel rooms would have access to our stuff. With nothing else to do, the driver drove away. And we were left sitting on the stairs outside the door, worried that someone might take our stuff. Not a great start to our vacation.

Tired and cranky, we decided to walk around a bit (mostly to stay awake). We headed toward a coffee shop and found a tourist information shop that happened to be open at this early hour. As we entered, the lady immediately apologized for the broken window that she was cleaning up. Apparently, there’s lots of partying and drinking in the streets at night and the night before got a little out-of-hand and someone broke the window. She seemed completely fine with the entire situation and was happy to help answer our questions. We took advantage of the time to book a whale watching tour for later in the week.

We walked around for a bit and just getting more tired. We decided to sit in a bookstore/coffee shop for a while and almost fell asleep. We happily returned to the hotel right at noon and our room was fortunately ready. We passed out slept soundly for a few hours.

We started the next day rested and relaxed. We spent the next two days walking around Reykjavik. There was a lake in front of our hotel that provided a lovely walk. We had a cat escort us every time we walked around the lake. We visited the Reykjavik Cathedral (Hallgrimskirkja) which is the most unusual cathedral I’ve seen. It sits at the top of the hill over Reykjavik so you can see it from any angle in the city. It’s designed to resemble trap rocks, mounts, and glaciers similar to Iceland’s landscape. We were able to go up in the tower and see views of the entire city. Reykjavik is a very mellow and quiet city during the day. It does get raucous at night which is noticeable first thing in the morning. But the city does a great job cleaning up the streets every morning!

We visited the Perlan which is a saga museum. It seemed like most of the museums in Iceland were considered saga museums where you follow a story from start to finish. In the case of The Perlan, the story was done through life-size figures. It was impressive seeing the level of detail they used to create all of the figures.

After a couple of days in central Reykjavik, we rented a car to visit some other areas of Iceland. One of the benefits of driving ourselves was that we could pull over any time. We were driving along and saw a waterfall (Seljalandsfoss) on the side of the road and pulled off to see this beautiful waterfall. We were able to walk behind it which I hadn’t done for any waterfall in the past. We then continued south to the town of Vik. Vik was clearly the standard spot where tour buses stop for lunch. We had lunch at the only restaurant in the town where my husband had a hamburger with an egg on top… on top of the bun! It was weird but good. We also visited the black sand beach of Vik.

The next day, we drove to Skogafoss and some geysers.

We then visited Gulfoss and Thingvellir. The drive between the two was exciting because it was a dirt road and we saw only one car. We kept wondering how lost we were but it turns out, we were on the right route the entire time!

From Reykjavik, we had gone south one day, southeast another day, and east the third day. We decided to go north with no specific destination in mind for our fourth and final day with the rental car. We ended up in a town called Borgarnes. On the way, we drove through the Hvalfjordur Tunnel which cut across the mouth of a fjord which improved travel time to the north by an hour. The tunnel is over 130 feet below sea level so ships can still access the ports in the fjord. In Borgarnes, we visited a tiny saga museum and at lunch at the restaurant in the museum. We also hid a letterbox just south of the town center.

On our last day, we visited the Blue Lagoon. It is a magical place except for all the large pushy German ladies wandering around naked in the locker room!

We also tried a lot of great food in Iceland. We couldn’t bring ourselves to try the puffin pizza or the whale steak. But everything else was great!

We were amused by the “Bonus Sexa” so we bought it at the grocery store. It was essentially marshmallow covered in chocolate. Crazy sweet!