Arriving in Reykjavík, Iceland
As I mentioned in this post, Adam and I went to Iceland last May and I'm terrible at going through photos from my vacations in a timely manner... But here are some snapshots we took in Reykjavík (almost a year later...).
Flying over Greenland was beautiful! Icelandair was amazing. Everything on board was so adorable and the flight attendants were really pleasant, too.
We stayed in Reykjavík our first night at the Welcome Apartments. The guy working there was sort of creepy and was talking to us in weird, cryptic sentences, but he was nice enough to let us drop our stuff off in a storage locker so we could spend a few hours exploring before checking into our room. He led us upstairs and unlocked the bin, and as Adam started to sort through our suitcase looking for a jacket, we realized the suitcase wasn't our suitcase. It was the same bag as ours, except somehow we didn't notice the huge, "ICELANDAIR CREW" tag on it. Yep, we stole our pilot's luggage... I had to make a call to the airport which was a struggle, but once I got through to someone and explained the situation, the woman on the other end was less than pleased. She arranged for a driver to come pick up the pilot's luggage from our hotel, but I was told we would have to go to the tourist center later on to claim our luggage.
We were exhausted, but we explored, thrilled to see sunshine in a place where we were warned over and over again that it was going to rain 100% of the time while we were there.
I loved Reykjavík. The shops and streets were just as cute as I had imagined, though I was surprised by all the graffiti we saw on almost every building we passed. For some reason, I hadn't pictured graffiti being an issue in Iceland, but it was everywhere. Some of it was cool, but I didn't understand most of it. I found a pretty interesting article about the graffiti here.
Our first stop was at Hallgrímskirkja. It's impossible to miss in Reykjavík since it's not only the largest church in the country, but it's also the tallest building in Reykjavík.
The view from the top was awesome. You can walk all the way around the enclosure and look out over Reykjavík from every angle. The colorful rooftops were so lovely!
One thing is for certain in Reykjavík: Cats rule the city. I of course found this to be one of the most exciting aspects of our trip and spent a lot of time trying to photograph every cat we came across.
After a long nap back at our hotel, we cleaned up and then headed to Cafe Loki for dinner. It was a cute little upstairs restaurant that had the most delicious rye bread!
Afterward, we checked out the Sun Voyager sculpture as the sun was setting before walking back to our hotel to call it a night. Lost luggage aside, I'd say our first day in Iceland was a success! As always, thanks for reading. xo