Naturally, a few skyrs and toast, coffee, tea, and muesli later, we were off this morning to the little airport in Egilsstaðir to drop off our rental car and hop on a domestic flight via
Flugfélag Íslands back to Reykjavík for 72 Euro per person. It was very neat to see the country in all of its topographical glory from the air!
We arrived in Reykjavík's domestic airport, (not Keflavík international airport we originally few through to get in-country) and chose to walk the 20 minutes into town. There was great weather and had us wishing that it was this nice during our journey out east! Once we made our way into town, we cabbed it over to
Kex Hostel, where we will be staying for the next few days. It was like no other hostel that I had ever stayed in through my years of backpacking. I immediately loved it!
This is mom's first time staying in a hostel, so I was glad she had a great first impression of the kind of culture I have experienced through the years. We checked in, enjoyed a nice lunch at the hostel's café & bar--fresh rye bread, salads, sandwiches, etc. then headed out to explore for the afternoon!
Reykjavík, in Icelandic, translates as "smokey bay." The first viking explorer who landed in the country saw that it was a place of geothermal activity, causing the area around the bay to be smokey. Although our walk wasn't so, it was very beautiful.
The new opera house
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| A nice Icelandic couple we met at the opera house with their daughter, Brigitte |
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| Meet Brigitte! |
Several years ago, a hotel in the center of the city began to dig in order to build an underground car garage. Incidentally, they stumbled upon an old viking settlement dated 871 +/- 2 AD, buried from years of volcanic ash, etc. What a find! Check it out:
871 +/-2 The Settlement Exhibition. The museum is underground and very interactive with multimedia stations throughout
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| This is one of the oldest man-made structures found to-date in Iceland |
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| Boundary Wall of the Viking Settlement |
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