Day 1: Arrival:
Highlights: Reykjavik Hallgrimskirkja Laugardalur
Approximate distance: ca 100 km / 62 miles
Once you have landed at Keflavik Airport in Iceland, please pick up your luggage and head through customs. Collect your rental car at the airport, make sure you receive a tablet with protective case and chargers, and proceed to your hotel in Reykjavik.
Arriving to Iceland is a wonderfully different experience, as the rugged nature of the land makes you feel like you’ve landed on a totally different planet, many visitors even go a far to say that they feel like they’ve landed on the moon. The feeling is not strange as you will on the 45 minutes’ drive from the airport to Reykjavík, drive through a large field of lava on which a big part of the cities suburbs is built.
Even though Reykjavík is in any scale a very small city, it offers a variety of things to explore. We recommend starting with a refreshing stop at Perlan, ‘the Pearl’, which offers a modern café and restaurant with a unique 360°view over the entire city as well as a very nice natural museum worth exploring. From there you can work your way to Hallgrimskirkja church, where you can go on foot exploring the city center. From there a nice shopping street takes you down towards the old harbor which has now been rebuilt as a cultural center with museums, art galleries, restaurants and cafés.
We recommend ending your day by dipping into one of Reykjavik’s many swimming pools, which gives you a unique insight into the life of the locals as the pools are a social meeting point where the locals discuss politics, the news and whatever comes to mind. The largest pool can be found in Laugardalur, a geothermal area located in the middle of the city of which the city is named after. The first Viking settler named the city Reykjavik, or ‘Smokey bay’ as it would be directly translated, due to the steam spouting from this area. Relaxing in the natural hot waters there is a perfect ending of this first day in Iceland.
Overnight in Reykjavík.