28th - Arrival in Iceland

Early departure from Copenhagen Thursday morning resulted in not much sleep, but one is willing to sacrifice much for vacation. At least the flight was on time (they all were) so there were no problems involved there. One of the first things the captain said was “Good morning this is your captain speaking. Welcome to SAS flight to Oslo, the airline with some of the world’s best stewardesses. Unfortunately we don’t have any of those with us today; instead we have some good looking ones with us.”

Changing flights in Oslo was without problems except for they wanted all through a security check with only two lane open. It took a while, but there were people in line who were getting quite stressed.

Arriving in Reykjavik I got my pickup to the hotel and spent the following hours walking the streets and relaxing in the hotel room for the coming night.

At 1800 I was picked up for the first activity of the trip. We exited the city and started off by driving by a place where they had fish hanging to dry. Following that we drove for another half an hour before we stopped in the middle of nowhere. A short walk from the road there was a big hole in the ground which was the opening to a lava tunnel and cave (Leiðarendi lava cave) which we walked and crawled through. It was interesting to see such tunnels but there wasn’t much room to move around in. If you are claustrophobic this was NOT the place for you.

Something smells fishy...

Crawling our way through the tunnels.

Reaching the exit, the red is from iron.

Driving an hour after this we ended up in a village called Eyrarbakki with the restaurant Rauda Husid (“Red House”) where we had a lobster dinner with desert. I was obviously a restaurant you would never find if you didn’t know of it.

After the dinner we began driving around, trying to find a place without too many clouds which was easier said than done as the clouds had been gathering throughout the night. Also the northern light activity didn’t seem very impressive so the only few sightings that we had were mostly fuzzy due to the cloud coverage.

After this not so successful result we drove all the way back to Reykjavik, arriving at the hotel at around 0200.