Wow, the time is finally here! I'm in Iceland and we've (we being boyfriend Chris and I) navigated smoothly from the airport which included picking up the car rental and finding our Airbnb. We took off from Tampa on Tuesday, landed in Cincinnati around 6PM where we camped out in the airport until our flight to Iceland took off at 1AM. We landed 11AM Iceland time, which is 4 hours ahead of home, so all in all it was a long travel journey of sitting on planes and waiting in airports - but from even just the couple hours we have been here I can say it's worth it!
Day 1 - Landed, settled in + explored Downtown Reykjavik
As with any airport, navigating your way through and out isn't too bad, and if you're lost, most people are willing to point you in the right direction. We got to our rental car and had about a 35 minute drive to our Airbnb that is right outside of downtown Reykjavik. We wanted to drop off our luggage and settle in before heading back out, and it was already around 1PM or so by the time we had done that. We decided to stick around Reykjavik and I had seem some cool pictures from the Perlan and their Wonders of Iceland exhibit, which includes a walk through man-made ice caves (semi-reminiscent of ICE at Gaylord Palms, if you're familiar - except instead of Christmas, you're walking through caves) and the opportunity to view the city from the 360 degree observation deck. We stopped in their restaurant for coffee and the space is incredible - the 360 views from the observation deck carry over to this dome-shaped glass building with lush, green plants all around. Amazing. When we were done at the museum, we made our way to the downtown area, aiming for the Hallgrimskirkja church. Along the way, we found rainbow roads and a lot of funky buildings. The church itself is HUGE. Like, tall HUGE. You can see it in the picture from the observation deck, and in the background of some of the rainbow road pictures.
