Europe > Exams: Iceland (Day 1)

Hola todos,

Well, the trip started out with adventure… traffic. Causes were a combination of rain and bad luck (hopefully it’s out of our system now, and the rest of the trip will be smooth sailing!).

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, though, and security was a breeze. Two of us regularly had to go through body scan security to enter work, so we’re old hands at security checkpoints.

We took PLAY Airlines, which is a new Iceland-based budget airline. Baggage restrictions were, well, restrictive.

To my surprise (and relief), they didn’t measure our bags. We were all roughly within the size requirements, but I was concerned they’d make us prove it. And after going through security, I just wasn’t sure things would fit back in our bags the same. But we had no issues boarding. Passports in tow, we each made it through with our one personal item.

PLAY has an option for you to pay extra money to choose your seat. We didn’t do that, although I was tempted to pay $50-ish dollars for extra legroom seats given my long legs. Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary at all! The legroom on the regular seats was great, even for an overnight flight.

Emily and I randomly ended up sitting next to each other, which is great for relying on a friend’s shoulder for a pillow. The flight was about 5 hours, and I was exhausted from the weekend. We were all ready to cuddle up for a few hours of sleep.

…

45 minutes. That’s how much sleep I got on the flight. Johanna thinks she got the same; Emily got a couple of hours. We boarded at 7PM DC time and landed in Iceland at 4:45AM local time, so we needed to be ready to go. But we were dead. Tired.

A fascinating thing about the flight was that there was no darkness outside during the overnight flight. We flew north over Canada and Greenland. We started out in sunlight, watched the sun *almost* set in this beautiful horizon of red, and then watched it rise again by the time we landed. While I was exhausted, that was kind of a cool experience.

The Reykjavik airport bathrooms were fascinating. An entire self-contained bathroom in each “stall”! Even the smallest or most commonplace things are different abroad.

We took a bus from the airport (brand: Airport direct) that took us into the city, about a 45 minute drive, for about $22. Even though it was early in the morning, there was so much light (the sun sets around 10:30PM and rises around 4:30AM right now!) so we got a great view of the landscape and countryside while making our way downtown. *cue Michelle Branch*

The country side is beautiful—a mix of life and lifeless, a blend of greens and browns and blacks that juxtapose volcanic rock with small groupings of trees with an undercurrent of green grass on the plain. There’s a lot of lava rock covered in moss. (Fun fact: The moss grows super slowly—1mm per year. Scientists can use the moss to learn the age and other information about the lava fields.) The landscape is relatively flat along the coast (where the main road is) except where it’s not; a visual variety of plains that are flat but not smooth, and rolling hills.

In the bus ride over, we met an American named Pat. He just graduated undergrad and had a 36-hour layover in Iceland before continuing on to Belgium. We chatted a bit but then parted ways when we got to Reykjavik.

We then walked into downtown Reykjavik (about 20 minutes). It was deserted, and almost everything was closed. Then again, it was 7AM and super cold! (Also, it was the Monday of a holiday weekend. We didn’t realize this, but Monday was Commerce Day, which appeared to be the day to celebrate service industry and customer service-focused jobs. Several places we tried to go for a meal or coffee were closed because of the holiday.)

We eventually found a cafe and had breakfast (dinner? Who knows…) and some coffee. Then we went to find our Airbnb and walk through town.

We dropped off our bags at the Airbnb, changed up our layers to add some warmth, and headed off to explore town. I cannot recommend enough walking through Reykjavik! It’s small enough to be manageable and charming enough to have surprises on every street for those who are looking for cute sights!

Hallgrimskirkja

Hallgrimskirkja is a church dedicated to a father of the Lutheran church in Iceland. (Lutheran Christianity is the state-endorsed religion of Iceland.) Its architecture combines simplicity (no ornate decor) with complexity (complementary geometric designs throughout).

Peep the pipe organ—5,275 pipes!

Entrance is free to the chapel, and we paid a bit extra to go to the bell tower. From there, we had an incredible view of the city. We were also there while the bells chimed!

It was warm inside and relatively quiet in the main chapel area (you couldn’t hear the bells, to our surprise) so we decided to have a group power nap in a jo pew. After about 45 minutes of actual sleep (finally!), we felt like brand new women. We were ready to grab a quick bite and quick sip of coffee before our Golden Circle tour.

The Golden Circle is the most popular road around Iceland, so our bus tour took us on part of that to get out of Reykjavik and check out the countryside. We loaded up on the buses, got comfortable, and …

Slept.

I’m only partially kidding, but we did sleep a lot on the bus ride. There was plenty of driving time passing the beautiful, idyllic countryside and I sleep easily in cars. But I didn’t sleep the whole time!

Our half-day tour was with Gray Line, and let me tell ya—this was the way to go. Having a guided tour, as opposed to renting a car, was totally worth it. Our tour guide Darren was amazing—he’s originally from the US but has lived in Iceland for about 20 years. The entire bus ride he was giving us background on Icelandic culture, history, and politics. It gave such helpful context to what we were experiencing and seeing. Way better than just seeing the things themselves!

Some things we learned about Iceland: they have some of the best fishing in the world; during the summer people golf 24 hours a day; about 200,000 people live in Reykjavik, which is about 2/3 of Iceland’s entire population; their average winter temps hover around 0C/32F (warmer than I thought).

There were three stops (each with restrooms, hot food for sale, and souvenirs!) with a bit of driving in between. We brought our lunches to save money, but it wasn’t necessary.

Gullfoss

Our first stop was a waterfall from glacier melt. We could actually see the source glacier, which was huge. But, it was only 25% the size of the largest glacier in Iceland, which is 5 times the city of London! So this glacier was 5/4 the size of London (#math). Huge!

The waterfall was beautiful. It’s always so cool to see the power of water in cutting and shaping the earth around it.

And while there, we saw Pat again! He was on our tour bus. Of all the tours and places we each could have chosen, it was just funny that we ended up on the same day tour.

Geysir

The next stop was Geysir, the oldest geyser in Iceland (and the one after which all geysers are named!). It’s inactive, but we did see a live geyser that goes off every 5-10 minutes.

The whole place smelled like sulfur, but we got used to it pretty quickly.

Lögberg

Tectonic plates usually push together to cause earthquakes. But in Iceland, the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are pulling apart, causing frequent earthquakes and a flatland valley (as opposed to mountains).

In this valley is an incredibly blue lake with some of the best scuba diving in the world, apparently.

But more attractive to me was the history of Lögberg. It is the home of Iceland’s judicial system, which sounded surprisingly like our own American system (a local judicial system with a series of appeals courts and a highest “supreme” court.) Judges were picked from the local community. Lögberg was one of the original settlement places where they had civilization and government in Iceland.

The law was originally kind of tribal or clan-based (i.e. revenge killings permitted) until the King of Denmark took over Iceland’s legal system. He installed a government enforcement regime for criminal law. It’s a part of the history of the world’s legal systems that I’m definitely interested in learning more about now!

We returned to Reykjavik that evening by about 7PM. We stopped at a grocery store for an easy dinner, as well as breakfast and lunch the next day.

We got situated at the Airbnb, which had a shared bathroom and kitchen. We ate, showered, and went to bed. With the three of us in a queen bed, we weren’t cold at all! I thought that between the sunlight and the continual napping I would have trouble falling asleep. But we all passed out promptly and slept soundly!

Step tracker: 24,954 steps

Besos,

Tina the ExploraDora