Sam & Georgia's Travels : Reykjavik

We stepped off the plane in Iceland at 6:30am (about midnight New York time) with no sleep at all and picked up a rental car for our first day in Reykjavik. It was just a small Toyota Yaris, and we picked up an Australian guy who needed a lift into the city as well.

Sam did well getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road with little sleep, but we underestimated just how long it would be so dark for! There was a small incident with a big pile of black dirt near the bus terminal when we were searching for Wi-Fi, but both the car and us were fine.

Eventually we found our hotel and ditched our bags and drove back out to a large hot spring called the Blue Lagoon. It was so nice to just relax and swim in the steaming hot water. The water was bright blue surrounded by dark volcanic rock, we got a good swim in before the weather turned and we headed back to Reykjavik.

An early night was in order as we were exhausted and had to get ourselves ready to pick up the campervan tomorrow!

There was a misunderstanding between the camper company and the people who we booked it through so we had to wait for the guy to come back from the country to get our car. We decided to make the most of our extra day in Reykjavik and had a look around the tiny city. Considering the entire population of Iceland is just over 300,000 it’s not surprising that their capital city is more of an oversized small town. There are no high-rise buildings, and the downtown area is a couple of cool little streets lined with small businesses. The buildings are all different colours and there are cute little cafes everywhere.

We walked the main streets and up to the tallest church in Iceland, Hallgrímskirkja. From the top of this church you get a 360 degree view of Reykjavik, which is a bit bigger than it feel but still about the size of Geelong if not a bit smaller.
On one side of the city there are four large tanks topped by a huge dome, this holds the cities hot water which comes form naturally occurring springs (it smells pretty funky). On the other is the harbour and a heap of huge university buildings. It really is a cool city and the people are all very friendly and speak awesome English, which is good because Icelandic is a ridiculously unpronounceable language!Eventually we got the call and picked up our car. It was a Mitsubishi Pagero with snow tyres and a bed in the back. It even had a stove, fridge, bed and running water.Just like that we were off down the icy roads, headed for the Golden Circle.