Iceland: Day 1

Caught the red eye flight from Chicago to Reykjavik. Only a 6 hour flight, did not sleep much (lies dad was in first class). Left Chicago at 9:20 and arrived in Keflavik Airport at 8:20 am the next day. 

There are no jetways to the terminal, so we caught a shuttle to main terminal.

Picked up our alcohol for the week in Duty Free. We were allowed “6 units” to purchase duty free. This added up to one box wine (Cotes Du Rhône) and one small bottle of gin for each of us. I got the Lundey Gin, Puffin Style Blue Gin and Pearl got the Glacier Gin Premium Handcrafted Icelandic Gin. (Read: Dad bought 2 boxes of wine and 2 bottles of gin, I bought 6 bars of chocolate).

Baggage was ready by the time we got there and was easy to pick up.

We rented an RV through Motorhome Iceland. An earlier email instructed us to go to Europcar - Holdur and go to the priority line for pickup. That was the easy part. Unfortunately, after checking in, it took over an hour to have our driver pick us up and take us to the place to pick up our camper. Then once we arrived at the rental place, it was another hour and a half to get our camper. Apparently our reservation was for a 12:00 pick up and we could not get our camper before that time. Make sure you check your reservation in advance. I do not recall requesting a 12:00 pick up. 

Once we had our camper, we were on our way. We decided to name the camper and came up with Irving (Iceland RVing) Today was very low key. We just wanted to get provisions for the camper. First we went to Costco. We were able to get meats, cheeses and other perishables including sushi! Pearl wanted to try the Costco Hot dogs to compare before we left. They were much bigger than the ones in Costco in the USA. We were both hungry, so it was a good stop.

Next we went to IKEA (just across the street) The camper only had 4 plastic cups and we (read: dad) prefer glass for our cocktails and wine. Normally we would thrift shot these items, but the camper was a bit formidable on the road and I was not quite ready to navigate it through the streets of Reykjavik looking for thrift stores,. IKEA would do in a pinch. 

The last quest was for bagged ice and tonic water. Once again right across the street was a grocery store called Bonus (Editor’s Note: Bonus has a weird pig mascot, its very… identifiable). It had everything we needed. 

By this time we are both exhausted from the flights (lack of sleep) and driving about. We identified a campsite near the airport that looked great. This would make it easier for us to pick up Wendell the next morning without having to get up early.

During our drive to the campsite, we heard a loud crash in the camper. The shelf we put the box wine on collapsed. Nothing was broken, but it did startle us. Closer to the campsite, we encountered our first speed bump on the road. The speed limit was 50km/hr, but it should have been 30. We hit it with a big swoop! It did slow us down! (Read: Pearl briefly fell asleep for 5 minutes due to no sleep and dad hit speed bump at full speed).

At the end of the peninsula was the campsite. It is a beautiful open site on the ocean next to two lighthouses. Simple accommodations but we had electrical hookups and a public bathroom. 

We finally had time to relax and unpack our bags and set up the camper. 

There are many birds that flock to this area. Hundreds were floating in the water along the shore. The rocky shore line had many places to look out and watch the birds and the wonderful scenery.

As evening came, we had our sushi from Costco for dinner and glasses of wine. The wine was great, but the sushi was not! Lesson learned. 

A few rounds of backgammon and we were ready for bed.