Usually before a trip, a do a bit of planning beforehand to make the most out of it. But this time, I didn’t do any planning. I didn’t even know how I would go from airport to the hostel I was staying. I decided to check on things a few hours before my flight and I kinda gave up on planning anything and went to airport.
My luggage limit was 5 kilos, but my bag turned out to be 3.5 kilos. It’s something that I learned over the time that travel as light as possible. The handbag tag I got my WowAir was kinda funny.
I didn’t talked to anyone at airport lounge and had my headphones on all the time. Very unlikely of me, but the last few months had changed me significantly. I waited for boarding and then got into plane. Guess what? No one was sitting next to me. During the flight, I ordered couscous with lentils and it was awesome.
When flight was 20-30 minutes before landing, I could see Iceland from my plane. It was completely grey and I was afraid that I might end up having same experience as I had in Tromso.
Anyway, plane landed and I came out in lounge and went around to ask people how to get to the place I was staying, I was told to go to one of the counters. I went there and started asking questions about bus with the lady at bus. All of a sudden, the lone wolf inside me woke up. Not only I got it figure out how to get to my place, but also confirmed the tickets for return journey and a Northern lights tour that I booked with my flight.
So I got into bus and the journey started. A middle-aged lady from Boston was sitting next to me. I helped her with the seat belt which started conversation about different things like weather. I told her about my office in Manchester and we started talking about nature there. With bus, it took over 50 minutes to get to my place. Initially I was planning to walk this distance.
I walked to the hostel, it wasn’t just a hostel, it was hotel/hostel combined with very nice lobby. I went to service desk and the guy at reception told me that I’ve been upgraded from 12 bed dorm to 10 bed dorm. I was like, that awesome, 2 less snores . I got the key and went in the room. It was a room with 8 Chinese women. That’s right folks, not 1, not 2, 8 of them. They had turned the whole place into their house. I could see rope tightened from end to another end of bed and their clothes hanging there. Later at the same time, Emily, a Canadian girl checked into the same room. We instantly became friends because you know, we were not Chinese.
At this point, I was starving. I went down and ask the guy at reception about authentic place for Icelandic cuisine. He suggested me a few places and I set out to walk. Before going directly to the place I decided to talk a walk towards beach. It was 300 meters from my hostel and offered an awesome view.
Then I started looking for the place the guy suggested me but I couldn’t find it so I went to a place called Old Iceland Restaurant. It was rather expensive, but hey, that’s another thing being a solo traveler offers me. I ordered local draft beer, meat soup and fillet of cod.
All the food was awesome and I ate so much that I felt like taking a 30 minutes walk despite I was tired and it was drizzling. I went again to beach and started walking. It was a bit cold but I could see mountain next to beach and that got me going. I kept walking and walking and taking pictures on the way
After walking for almost 45 minute, I reached this place, which is almost the end of Reykjavik. There is small light house here and from there I could see the nearby island. Some pictures
After spending a couple of minutes there, I started walking back towards hostel. I reached there in another 45 minutes. On the way back, I found another interesting place,
I was dead tired by then. I decided to take a nap/sleep. But the Chinese were packing their stuff and they decided to completely ignore the fact that a fellow human being is trying to sleep. After struggling for an hour, I decided to go outside and sit in Kitchen. I chat with a couple of people around and then sat there for a quite sometime until they stopped packing. It was around 2 AM when I decided to go back to room. They were all asleep but guess what? One of them was snoring like a bear. I couldn’t sleep. Lately, I’ve been having issues with sleep anyway.
It was around 4 or something I started to fall asleep but Chinese woke up again and started to pack and leave again. After that, I couldn’t sleep at all. That kinda marks the end of my first day and night in Iceland.
Abby On Travel 