Icelandic Adventure: Part 1

once upon a time I used to update this blog with our adventures....Without further ado, I present to you...the Iceland series.

Day 1:

We arrived in Iceland at the ungodly time of 6:30 in the morning. We took our time getting to the bus stop because we knew we couldn't check in to our hotel until 2pm :( Turns out, that was a bad plan because the Airport in Iceland is pretty small so the buses into town schedule their runs around flight arrival times. Lame. We hung out for a few more hours and then grabbed a bus into Reykjavik. We had planned to drop our luggage at the hotel and then wander around until we could check and and take a nap, but the Icelandic Elves were watching out for us!! Our fabulous hotel let us check in early so we could catch some sleep before dinner! We stayed at the Reykjavik Residence Hotel and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone that wants to travel to Iceland. Our room was so cute. We also had a kitchenette (not pictured because in my tired state I took some really blurry pictures). Every morning they delivered a cute little basket of breakfast foods :) I don't even want to talk about how much brie I ate on this trip!

 

Isn't it cute!!! It looks like an Ikea showroom!! Big thanks to TripAdvisor for helping me pick this fabulous hotel.

After some much needed rest we decided to hit the pavement and check out Reykjavik. We wondered around, map in hand, looking for some local sites. What we found was a church that looked like a rocket ship. Hallgrímur (dont ask me how to pronounce that or any other Icelandic word) is the tallest building in Iceland. You can also take an elevator to the top of the steeple for some great views, but the church was closed when we got there :(

What's a girl to do when the church is closed? Find some food, of course!!! This cute cafe was right across the street from the church and was also on my list of restaurants to try! I love happy coincidences!!! 

Cafe Loki :)

When in Iceland...eat weird things!!! I didn't come here to eat pizza so Josh and I picked some traditional Icelandic dishes. Here he has some smoked lamb on flat bread, smoked trout on rye bread and mashed fish (whatever that is) on rye. In the little cups are dried fish and butter and chunks of fermented shark (which was gross). 

My dinner was the ubiquitous mashed fish on rye, egg and herring on rye and Loki's own rye bread ice cream. All of these things look weird and sound weird but were really very good! I actually liked the mashed fish a lot, but the ice cream was the star of the show!

Another view of the rocket ship church

We wondered around the harbor a bit and found this stunning view

And also this one!

We had our first tour this night. We had booked a Northern Lights tour as this is the best time of year to catch a glimpse of those famous lights. Unfortunately, the sky was cloudy and all we saw was a bunch of dark sky despite our tour guide's best efforts. There was  a lot of standing around outside in the cold looking at clouds and we didn't make it back to the hotel until about 1:30 am. Luckily, since the Northern Lights are so elusive, we were given a free tour to try again the next night!