Preparations
In September last year, after an extremely busy summer of work, Cath and I decided that we needed a break. We’d discussed several possible destinations and debated the type of holiday that would best refresh our depleted batteries.
We’d parked the idea for the evening in order to get some food. Given that we were, at the time, spending our working week living out of the Park Inn in West Bromwich, our options were severely limited. In the end, after yet another round of debate, we decided to go to the local Fish and Chip shop.
As was customary for us, Cath waited in the car, while I fetched our bag of greasy fuel. I was in there for what seemed like an eternity. ‘Chip Stop’ as it was called, had recently changed hands and this had thrown the service into a state of mild disarray. Once we had agreed on what I had ordered and been presented with several items which formed no part of this agreement, I finally got hold of our meal and was on my way.
I got back to the car ready to regale Cath with the tale of why I had been so long when she joyfully exclaimed “I’ve booked us flights to Iceland!”
In the time it had taken me to get two kebabs and a large chips, she had organised a week away in the land of fire and ice. This was the last time we went to Chip Stop.
Needless to say, I was both surprised and extremely excited. Iceland had long been somewhere I’ve dreamed of visiting for many reasons (as discussed here). As the weeks went by and our trip approached, we conducted enough research to make sure we made the most of our time there. Before we knew it, it was time to go.
On our way…
It was early morning when we arrived at Birmingham Airport for our flight to Reykjavik. Looking forward to the week ahead, we made our way through security and into the departure lounge.
Now, I normally hate these places. Unimaginably vast and always littered with tired, sunken eyed zombie-folk, they’re not somewhere anyone would choose to spend even a small part of their holiday time. There is though, one small bonus that the departure lounge provides that is its redeeming factor. It is the one place on earth where the social stigma associated with drinking in the morning does not apply.
No matter the situation, whether you’re celebrating or mourning, taking a sip of alcohol before midday is always met with shaking heads and the disapproving whispers of those around you. They wonder where your life went wrong and repeatedly tap their pockets to ensure that you haven’t stealthily swiped their wallet.
These social shackles are inexplicably removed (along with your belt and shoes) the instant you pass through the security area. Stepping into a departure lounge at 7am is like walking into the brewing wing of Willy Wonka’s factory. Children dive into bubbling lakes of Stella Artois and nuns pluck vodka jellies from the branches of trees while pissed Umpa-Lumpas stagger about singing dirty songs about tits. This is where the holiday truly begins.
Embracing the custom, we each enjoyed a drink with our Wetherspoons breakfast before boarding the plane and setting off.
After a short flight of less than 3 hours, we swooped into Reykjavik International Airport and set about exploring a new country.
As we exited the arrivals building we were instantly met with the most vivid and complete rainbow that we had ever seen arcing its colourful path across a mottled grey sky. We took this as a sign that a great time was ahead. but this was mainly because we hadn’t realised at that point just how frequent rainbows are in Iceland.
The location and landscape of Iceland has the uncanny habit of producing micro-climates. At any one time you could be standing in complete sunshine, staring across at torrential rain on one side and billowing clouds of snow on the other. What this means in practice is that an Icelandic sky has more rainbows than a unicorns latrine.
The other startling thing, which we only noticed after gawping, open mouthed at the rainbow for three or four minutes, was the lack of buildings. Most airports are surrounded by high-rise hotels, or logistics warehouses or… something, but there was nothing. A car park, a few small huts and a bus – that was about it. This didn’t feel like an international airport at all.
We waited 15 minutes for the airport shuttle to take us a full 200 metres to the car rental building on the outskirts of the car park. After a short wait, we took custody of a grey VW polo that would be our chariot for the remainder of the trip.
I was feeling slightly apprehensive about driving a manual, left-hand drive car but these nerves soon dissipated because driving in Iceland is a dream. The roads are very well maintained and all but empty even during rush hour. This meant that I was free to get up to speed without being hassled by other drivers and made getting around extremely easy.
First Impressions of Reykjavik
Our home for the week was the Radisson Blu Saga hotel just to the south-west of the city centre. It’s your standard business hotel that you can find anywhere in the world but it provided a cosy room and excellent breakfast for the time we were there.
After settling in, Cath mentioned that she’d read about a lighthouse that was not too far away and was a great spot to watch the sun go down so we set off on a meandering walk through Grandar, in the suburbs of Reykjavik. This took us through street after street of tightly packed, red-roofed houses. I’m not sure what the Icelandic people have against curtains but I don’t think I saw a single set on the entire walk. As it was getting dark, this afforded us a unique and intimate view of normal life in this quaint, little community.
As we got toward the coast around Selfjarnarnes, we soon realised that the aforementioned lighthouse did not seem to be where we expected but that didn’t take away from anything as the view from anywhere along the peninsula is beautiful. Once we had watched the sun had gone down over the north Atlantic ocean, the rain started to fall and we made a rather soggy stroll back to the hotel.
It was relatively late when we got back but regardless of both this and the lashing rain we decided that we should head into the city centre in order to pick up some supplies, get some food in our bellies and celebrate out successful arrival with a drink. During the drive to a car park just off the main road, I don’t think we saw one car.
Upon parking up we set about exploring the immediate area and soon located a small supermarket where we dodged an extraordinary amount of dried fish to track down some edible nibbles for the room. Having succeeded in the first part of our mission, we looked around for somewhere that could serve both food and drinks at this late hour and settled upon the ‘American Bar’. It was a spit-and-sawdust style mock up of, surprisingly enough, an American bar with mainly local patrons all watching Spanish football on the giant screens which covered the walls.
After enjoying a mountain of chicken wings and several well needed beers, we headed back to rest for our first real day in Iceland.
That’s probably a good place to leave it for this post and it’ll be obvious by now that these will not be short stories. So far we’ve seen almost nothing of Iceland, have been there barely half a day and here I am still rambling on after 1300 words of tangential twaddle! Just imagine what it will be like when we’ve actually started exploring.
I’ll put Part 2 up in a couple of days so that you can follow along the rest of the adventure.