Wednesday, 6 June 2012
Plane touched down at 1am local time at a place called Keflavik. It was a town about 30km away from the capital city, Reykjavik. The majority of the international flights land in Keflavik. I timetabled about 5 hours here before I need to head into Reykjavik. I decided to hike into town from the airport. The moment I stepped outside the airport. It was freezing, Iceland – clue was in the name. That wind was the coldest that I have ever experienced. I had to go back into the airport to put my extreme weather gear on.
The Lonely Planet guidebook said that there was absolutely nothing to see in Keflavik. I would agree with that. There used to be heavy American soldier presence in the height of the Cold War. The walk was only about 4km, but I was carrying 14kg of kit. That is over 20% of my weight, so if I fell over backwards then that would probably be the end of the trip. After a short walk around the town, I returned to the airport to catch the bus to Reykjavik about 30km away.
Reykjavik is the capital city of Iceland, a city full of culture. I picked up a free map from the tourist information centre, set off exploring the city. The Hallgrimskirkja was a huge church in the middle of the city. It provided a great point of reference. I went to a recommended breakfast cafe, called the Laudermat. The cafes in Reykjavik or Iceland in general were really well decorated. This one had a really cool travel and retro feel with all the maps and books. I had the bread basket with houmous and scrambled egg, which was the ideal travelling food with the carb, protein and salt. However, later I had been informed that Israel has the best houmous in the world. Noted for future reference.
I walked around the Reykjavik city centre. It was really pretty, the architecture were great with different coloured painted corrugated steel plated each building. There were a lake and a park close to the centre. Eventually time was up for another flight to the unknown, Akureyri. Domestic flights were actually reasonably cheap, hence I bought a couple (there and back). The most logical way of choosing which domestic airport to fly to was to pick the first destination on the dropdown list. A for Akureyri. Thankfully that was not in Greenland.
The weather was miserable. Arctic wind and british weather combined to make the ultimate misery. Why did I come here? The answer, like the weather became clearer after each day. This place was just awesome.
Adventures of Delboy 