Reykjavik 2021

After just getting used to Eastern time, we had to quickly switch to Icelandic time, and that was brutal. We left Boston yesterday at noon, took a 5 hours flight, and arrived in Iceland at 9pm. It's a 40 minute drive from Keflavik airport to Reykjavik, so after checking into our hotel, it was about 10pm. We were a bit hungry, but almost every restaurant was closed at that time. We also learned that bars stopped serving food at 10, due to the current Covid situation, which didn't help us. So we went to a nearby convenience store, and got a sandwich and some chips and ate them back at the hotel room. Simple, but better than nothing.

We then attempted to go to sleep, but that didn't go well for either of us. At around 7am, we gave up trying to get more sleep, and decided to get ready for the morning. First we went to Brauð & Co. for a croissant and cinnamon roll.

Taking advantage of the early start, we went to Hallgrimskirkja (pictured at the top of the blog), the most famous church in the city. You can see it from almost everywhere in the city.

Church, sculptures, architecture, these are the things that are easy to see at 8 am when jet lagged 😅

Then at 10 we went to the National museum and learned all about Iceland’s history, such as the very sudden change of the national religion from paganism to Christianity in a day. We then needed more coffee, so we found a nearby cafe, which also served toast with marmalade and cheese:

It was an interesting combination of flavors…

Below are some other photos we took during our morning walk around the city:

We then went yarn shopping (lots of sheep in Iceland 🐏🐏) and wandered through the commercial district for a bit. In the afternoon, we paused for afternoon tea, and then went museum hopping.

We ended our walking tour of Reykjavik by going to the other side of the harbor, where we walked up an art installation that was a grassy hill with a fish drying hut at the top. And then we went to Omnom chocolate to get some chocolate for the rest of the trip. Nick couldn't resist getting some ice cream though.

Below are some other random photos of our only full day here. Tomorrow, we pick up our rental car and start driving to Hella, with some stops along the way.