Iceland's Ring Road - Reykjavik (Day 1)

UPDATED: 1/16/2023

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We booked our flight on Icelandair in September 2017, about 9 months before our June-July 2018 trip. We planned to arrive a little before midnight and spend two nights in Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavik. But, as we’ve experienced before, the risk of booking a flight so far in advance is that the airlines may shift their schedules. A few months before our trip, we learned that our flight had become a red-eye, getting us in the following morning at 6:30am local time. We contacted our Airbnb hosts, who had no problem with the delayed check-in.

The flight left Dulles airport (metro Washington, DC) at 8:30 in the evening, and we ended up experiencing a prolonged sunset as we flew northeastern towards Iceland. The views were gorgeous and it never got dark, a sure sign of things to come at mid-summer in the north! We flew over Greenland and were able to see the massive, snowy towers of its southern coast out the plane window. (Yes, I lucked out with the window seat on the trip there.) I rarely bother to take photos out of airplane windows because they typically don’t come out looking that great, but I’m glad I made an exception on this trip.

For a fun in-flight feature, the plane had simulated northern lights running along the ceiling during the entire flight through some sort of LED display. I took a few photos and managed to convince several people that they were photos of the actual northern lights before quickly confessing to my lying ways. I enjoyed the joke, as you can only see northern lights when it is dark, and we never saw any dark while we were in Iceland.

Those ridges are the southern tip of Greenland.

The airport in Reykjavik operated like a well-oiled machine, and we were through customs in no time. It was shockingly cold outside, somewhere in the upper 40 degree range, and we quickly bundled in coats and hats that we’d felt silly hauling from Virginia, where temperatures had been in the mid-90s and humid. After catching a short shuttle to the rental car area, we got on the road to Reykjavik, about a 45-minute drive, and headed straight to our downtown Airbnb. (Check out our Iceland Accommodations blog for more details.)

Just arrived at our Airbnb and checking out our excellent basement apartment accommodations.

Some pre-arrival Googling informed us that there was a fantastic bakery, known for its cinnamon buns, and it happened to be a mere block or two from our accommodation. Serendipity! Braud & Co. is a tiny bakery, tucked along a street just down a hill from Hallgrímskirkja, a well-known church landmark, and filled with golden, flaky deliciousness.

Hello, World!

When you’ve been traveling all - night? what time is it even? - and you’re hungry, you realize it is always the right time for hot, freshly baked cinnamon buns. And what do they need to wash them down? We went in search of coffee and found some at Cafe Babalú . Fed with our insides warmed by coffee, we headed back outside into what had become a foggy drizzle, walked past Hallgrímskirkja with a note to ourselves to return later to check it out, headed a few more blocks to a Bonus grocery store for some supplies, and then went back to our apartment, feeling like we had already gotten a sense of how walkable the city was. While it is a travel no-no to sleep in the middle of the day, we all took a several hour nap, felt much better afterwards, and had no further trouble adjusting to the new time, which is 5 hours ahead of US Eastern Standard Time.

Post-nap, happy and rested, we were ready for a more substantial meal and walked down to the main shopping part of the city, which seemed to run along a road called Laugavegur. Across from the grocery store was Lemon, a juice bar and sandwich shop, where we grabbed sandwiches and ate them overlooking the pedestrians on the street below. From there, we decided to wander around the city with no real destination in mind and headed initially towards the harbor area.

We passed the Prime Minister’s Office, Stjornarradid, and headed towards Harpa, the concert hall which opened in 2011. En route, we passed extensive building projects and cranes along the coast. Harpa, right on the water, is made with colored glass that shifts and evolves as light moves or as you move around it.

We wandered inside to check it out and the sweeping, open interior is as interesting as the exterior. It also provided a nice break from the cool ocean breeze. It was also in Harpa that we experienced our first - but not last - pay bathroom, though we opted to skip it in search of a free version. While there is absolutely some logic to seeking payment from people seeking to use a bathroom, after all it does need to be cleaned, restocked, and maintained, it definitely surprised us compared to our American way of life.

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

From there, we wandered south along Tjörnin, a pond, then meandered through neighborhoods without any destination in mind, and found ourselves back at Hallgrímskirkja church just shortly before closing following approximately the route on the map here.

Adorning the entrance to the utterly unique building is a statue impressive in its own right of Leifur Eiríksson, thought to be the first European to set foot upon America. The statue was a gift from the United States to Iceland in 1930, commemorating the 1,000 year anniversary of the establishment of the first parliament at Þingvellir. Inside the church is impressive architecture and an enormous organ, and they say the facade is meant to express the landscape of Iceland.

The big news of the season was the success Iceland’s soccer team was having in the World Cup. That night was their game against Croatia, so we scored prime seats in a pub on Laugavegur called Boston Bar Reykjavik and cheered on Iceland, who lost the game and were out of the Cup as a result. You can’t beat cheering for an underdog team with its fellow countrymen in another country in a warm pub, cold beers in hand, and fish and chips under fork, can you?

The following morning, I went down the street to get some cinnamon buns and chocolate croissants for breakfast because why wouldn’t you when such deliciousness is a mere block away? After a relatively slow start, we got on the road a quarter to ten and left the city to tour the Ring Road with the first stop on our journey being Þingvellir National Park .

Let’s talk about that name for a minute, starting with the letter Þ. The first thing of note is that while it looks most similar to the letter “p”, the similarities end there. The letter is pronounced like a “th” and the letter itself is called “thorn”. It was originally found in Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish, and Gothic, but the only modern language that retains it is Icelandic. Icelandic has 32 letters, and thorn is the 30th in the alphabet. If you were to try to type the word on an English keyboard, the correct replacement would be “Thingvellir,” spelling out the “th” sound that it makes. The next trick in the word is the double “ll”. While not always, in most cases the double “ll” is pronounced like a “tl”, which yes, is an odd sounding combination to English speakers. That means this name is pronounced Thingvetleer. Got it? Good, you have now mastered about 20% of my Icelandic language knowledge!

Keep reading about our journey in Iceland here!

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