A friend from college from way back had been asking me to take her to Iceland, so we finally made it happen. We were sorority sisters and have known each other for almost 40 years. She was an excellent travel partner and we had the best time! We just flew home last night and with jet lag I was up at 2:20am today, lol, so figured I might as well do a trip report now.
Day 1 Thursday
We were due to fly out at 8pm out of SEA, and our drivers were picking us each up around 2:30 for the airport. At 11:25 I received a text that our flight was in the process of being cancelled. I tried not to panic, but called my friend and told her to get to the airport NOW. I called Icelandair and went onto their chat and got us rebooked on the 3:50 flight. I was on hold for quite a while getting that done, so in the meantime I got the dogs in the crate, and the house locked up and ordered an Uber and cancelled my driver (not time for him to get here that fast). I asked the Uber driver to drive as fast as he could, but alas he had one speed, and it was about the pace of a snail. We made it though!
Checking in at the Icelandair counter, surprisingly there was not a line. They did make us put our bags in the sizer and they weighed them, which they always do at SEA, but they no longer tag the bags as "cabin approved". We made our way to the gate. Due to the flight change, we lost our good seats, and both ended up in middle seats. I was lucky and the two gentlemen on either side were very nice, although chatty so there was no sleep to be had.
Day 2 Friday
While still at SEA, I emailed our car rental company to let them know we were arriving 4 hours earlier. Upon arrival, our car was not ready so we went over to the Aurora Hotel and had breakfast and waited. It didn't take too long. We picked up the car and were off to Reykjavik.
We had booked the hotel for the night before so that we could go straight to our room. It took us a while to find the parking, so round and round the block we went until we finally figured it out.
Once checked in it was time to go explore Reykjavik. We walked down to the Sun Voyager, over to Harpa, checked out the Phallological Museum, walked up the Rainbow Road, stopped in at the Handknitting Association Store, and then had lunch at Sjavargrillid. D had a shellfish salad and I had the lobster tacos. Both were excellent! We made a quick stop at Braud for cinnamon rolls, but D was starting to feel the jet lag so we went back to the room at 2pm. She napped and I kept wandering. We had been awake for 25 hours at this point. A couple hours later D popped up out of bed and was raring to go once again. We walked to the Sea Baron for dinner. We each had their famous lobster soup and then shared veggie and potato kabobs.
At this point we received an email from our northern lights tour that it was cancelled for tonight due to conditions. So instead wwe went back to Harpa to see it in the evening lights, which is stunning. We also walked way back to Pufa, which is a hill on the waterfront next to a fish processing factory. This is an 8 meter tall hill with no handrails or anything, and a very narrow circular path to the top. I can attest that in the wind it is a bit unnerving. At the top you can see the city, and there is a fish drying hut there.
After this we walked along the waterfront back to the Sun Voyager with the evening lights and then back to our hotel for a nightcap in the bar. The bartender made us something with prosecco. I have no idea what it was, but it went down very easy:) 25k steps today