Iceland

Back in the fall we came across a great deal in a Travelzoo email for a trip to Iceland. Iceland? Why Iceland? For one, it's the best time to view the Northern Lights. Summer stays light there 23 hours a day so there isn't much of a chance of seeing them. Plus we liked the idea of an elevated level of adventure. 

We got a great deal through Icelandair for travel right from Denver. Six days and five nights at the Hilton in Reykjavik, breakfast on arrival morning and round-trip airfare for a grand total of $1525. We couldn't pass it up. I highly recommend signing up for Travelzoo emails. They will even send you deals that are local to you. 

So we booked the trip and then proceeded to buy any and every bit of equipment we thought we might need. Camelbak style backpacks to hold water, walking sticks, GPS, hiking boots, binoculars, tripod for my camera, headlight headbands, underwater camera, knife, even waterproof matches...you know, just in case. 

We made it! The flight from Denver to Iceland was only 7 hours which wouldn't be too bad if we hadn't stayed up until 4 am the night before! We thought that it would be a great idea to get as little sleep as possible and then sleep on the plane. It didn't quite work out like that. It was super hard to sleep so we were pretty tired once we got there.

The shuttle service, Fly Bus, cost 9000 ISK (Icelandic Krona) is around $79 for two people to ride to and from the airport. That isn't that bad considering that Reykjavik is 45 minutes away and picking up a rental car at the airport there is much more expensive than picking it up in town.

 We stayed at the Hilton Reykjavik Nordica, which was a very nice hotel. I can't believe it but I didn't take one single picture inside the hotel. I normally do but I was just exhausted. 

When we got to our room we couldn't find the A/C controls so I called the front desk and asked where to find them. The woman at the front desk was very nice but I could hear the (silly American) in her voice when she told me that there was no A/C in Iceland. They open the window for A/C. Huh? What? No A/C? It wasn't bad after all, it stays pretty cool there. My initial thought was that I was going to be hot the whole time. Ha! Silly American.

Our hotel was in walking distance from the downtown shopping area of Reykjavik. The hotel gives you (with a deposit) a bus pass to use all over the city for free. Loved that! I don't know how much money we saved from that but it was just an awesome surprise for us. 

I snapped a couple of pics of their crosswalk men. Nothing wrong with them, just different than here in America.

 On the bus the next stop was "Filadelfia" aka Philadelphia.

 Because baby heads in jars is normal in a shop window right?

 I loved the look of this little steakhouse all tucked away in a little alcove down a flight of stairs.

 They even had their menu posted. Uhhhhh horse fillet? No thanks. Poor Icelandic horses. They are so cute. You see horses there like we see cows here. They are everywhere! As far as price, the exchange rate is ISK (Icelandic Krona) 100 = .89 cents American. So for around $23 you can have a nice horse fillet. Yumm.

 We saw this gem on the way into the grocery store. It was an advertisement for I don't know what. But there are two things I find disturbing in this. #1 Why is he holding a creepy baby doll wearing a suit? #2 Why is the creepy doll holding a cigarette?

The grocery store in the downtown area is called Bonus and their logo is a drunk pig. Instead of having dairy and meat cases, you walk into the cooler room and shop the aisles. Some very nice people helped us pick out lunch meat for sandwiches. We chose ham and chicken but another option was lamb.

They don't give you plastic grocery bags for free. It's like Aldi or Ikea, you bring your own or pay for theirs. I had a couple of totes I brought so we used those when we could.

 It is such a clean place except for the graffiti. It is all over the city.

1000 Krona. Sounds like a lot but it's actually a little under $9.

Hallgrímskirkja is a Lutheran church and pretty much visible anywhere in the city. We used it as a guide to know which direction to head if we wanted to get back to the main bus station. We only stopped by this one night. We were heading to the trail of lights that was set up for the Winter Lights Festival, which happened to start our first night there.

So the light trail was different colored light set up in different locations throughout the city. They are somewhat close to each other and are meant to be traveled to on foot. We had a map of the trail so we walked the city to see as many as we could. It was amazing. Reykjavik is a wonderful city with super nice people.

We made it to the first stop on the trail which was a very cool sculpture garden. It had the creepiest, Halloween sounding music blasting on speakers as we approached. The lights and light show were interesting and I'm glad we got to see it.

The city is so beautiful at night! This is a shot from across a small lake. It was frozen over on one side and we actually saw people out walking on it!

 We explored the city until 11 pm and headed to the only open place for food, Devito's Pizza. It had pictures of American cities on the walls and a tv in the corner playing one of the Saw movies. A Saw movie. Just what I want to watch while I eat. We took the pizza to-go.

 No parmesan or red pepper flakes here.

I saw this beautiful mural on the walk back to the hotel. We thought the buses stopped at 11pm. They didn't. The walk was short though and the weather was nice and cool.

I like that the first day we had in Iceland was chill and laid back. We felt like we knew our way around after this first night since we had pretty much walked the city.