Our flight arrived on time at the Keflavík airport. There was a lot of confusion as the signage was not too good and international passages are not routed directly to immigration and customs like so many other airports. Instead, you can mingle right in with the departing customers in the general shopping area. We went ahead and purchased some alcohol (one litre each) and exchanged some money. In retrospect, the alcohol was a very good move. Much cheaper and more convenient than trying to find drinks at the farm houses. I exchanged $400 but easily could have gotten by with less as I don't think we went a single place that didn't accept credit cards! Like many had noted, Icelanders use the plastic like crazy. They even buy single drinks with credit at bars that don't require signatures.
We finally found the route to immigration, baggage claim and customs and sped our way through; with barely a glance from the agents. Outside customs we meet up with the representatives from Farm Holidays who would drive us to our hotel. The weather was cold and wet with temperature around 40F. The landscape and the road from the airport to Reykjavík is pretty boring with the exception of a few moss covered lava fields. I even joke for a minute saying, "what in the hell are we doing HERE?".
We arrive at our hotel at around 8:30AM. It's pretty obvious we aren't going to be able to check-in. We are told we'll have to wait until 2PM. This is when sleeping on the plane was supposed to benefit us, but we carried on regardless. We left our bags and headed out to find something to eat while we decided what to do until 2PM. We found a nice bakery around the corner from the hotel. I grab a juice and bagel for around 450ISK ($7), getting our first taste of Iceland's high prices. Taking our time discussing our options, we make a plan to head out and check out the city's architecture and shopping.
Using Lonely Planet's architectural tour as a guide, we walk around Reyjkavík seeing such sites as the Börg Hotel, Austorvöllur, some of the historic wooden houses, Ráðhús and some other sites before winding up at Hallgrímskirkja, the modern church that towers over Reyjkavík along with its statue of Leifur Eiríksson. The church is quite an impressive building from the outside but rather ordinary from the inside. My personal highlight from the inside is huge pipe organ which we get to hear since someone is playing. After the church, we head down towards the water and the impressive "Sun Craft" sculpture.
The large silver ship looks great against the still harbor water.Still a few hours away from our check-in, it is time to check out some stores. Although neither of us plans on purchasing much at this point (we'll save that for our return in a week), we don't mind browsing to get a feel for what is unique. One thing we quickly discover is Icelanders love to read. Bookstores are everywhere and all quite busy. Many of these are quite large but there are also smaller, more intimate bookstores. Music stores are also numerous as are arts and crafts stores. Music CDs go for close to $25, even for local bands. I would have loved to sample some music prior to buying but opportunities for this weren't readily available. My brother, who is more hip to the Iceland music scene picks up a CD.
We make our way back to our hotel but not before picking up hot dog at the famous Bæjarins Bestu. There was a decent line of people there just about all hours during our stay in Rekjavík. The dogs didn't disappoint and were one of the better food values in Iceland at around $4.50. Dogs are served with fried onions, onions and three different sauces. The sauces were a little too heavy for me, especially the honey mustard, which was just too sweet.
It was great to finally get checked into the hotel after such a long time as we'd been up about 27 hours at that point. The hotel and room were very nice and at a great location. Room was very roomy and clean and all amenities were very nice. Took us a while to figure out a hotel key card was needed to turn on all the electricity. Time to relax a bit and gather some energy for what was planned to be a long night. Dinner consisted of a burger, fries and Coke for almost $20 at a nearby restaurant. No point in heading out on the town early as the real activity doesn't get going until midnight.
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