When Icelandair makes a 48 hour stopover this easy, it’s hard to say no. We’ve never been to Iceland, and the flight to the UK was stopping here anyways. Might as well make a day or two out of it.
Now Icelandair is a bit of a budget airline, and we were a little nervous about the plane being really small/cramped (a British Airways flight has scarred us for life on this). However the plane was actually quite roomy from Portland to Reykjavik. Non-alcoholic drinks were free, however there was no meal or snacks served for free. We were full prepared having stopped at Jimmy John’s on the way to the airport.
Seven hours later we are beginning our descent into Reykjavik, and our captain says that if you are sitting on the right side of the plane, you are going to see the active volcano that erupted again the prior morning.
To say my husband about jumped out of his seat is an understatement…
Did we know the volcano had erupted? Unquestionably yes…Kevin has been on volcano watch for weeks (this is not an exaggeration).
Did we book this flight knowing the possibility was there to see the active volcano? One can safely assume it was part of our conversations around the booking.
Has a geologist / professor from a college in Idaho been the most watched videos on Kevin’s YouTube these last few weeks? Also yes.
Did Kevin come into my home office Thursday afternoon PST (early morning Friday Iceland time) to tell me … It happened, it’s happening, we are gonna see the lava? I think you know this answer already.
Sitting on the right side of the plane however was complete accident and boy do I think Kevin seeing the lava from the air is rivaling some of his best days ever — including our wedding day.
We have never been near an active volcano before, so that was pretty amazing to see from the air. We then drive about a mile from it to see the lava from the ground.
Now it’s important to note that this particular volcano is a ‘slow burn’ and not a stereotypical explosive one. There is a town that was evacuated and the Blue Lagoon is closed due to its proximity, but even being as close as a mile, we were in no danger at all. We are not adventure thrill seekers in that sense, and are always safe.
Enough about the volcano for now (much to Kevin’s dismay) — we actually landed in Iceland at 5am after sleeping exactly zero minutes on the plane (it was only 10p in our home time zone), so day one adventuring is gonna be a rough one staying awake. We admittedly did take an afternoon nap once we were able to check into our apartment — only had to set about 12 alarms between us to make sure we didn’t sleep too long.
Its actually colder than we wanted it to be which has helped us power through too, and the best part is it is Culture Night today. Basically Reykjavik’s birthday. This morning was a marathon followed by all day festival events — battle of the marching bands, parades, tons of music, crafts, food and more. We did not know this was happening when we booked, however it is very normal for us to stumble upon European festivals randomly. We must have some special festival goer aura…
Mostly today was a while lot of walking to see Reykjavik, a quick stop to buy some warmer socks for me and random food along the way. We were wandering the city sooo early in the morning that it felt like we had the town to ourselves until the festival kicked off.
Random pictures of the day:
And of course, breakfast + lunch + dinner. A local bakery is always the first thing on my radar to track down when visiting a new country, this one did not disappoint. Lunch was a Columbian food truck — arepas de cerdito (pork with a cornmeal base) and an empenada with their homemade jalepeño sauce. My mouth is burning just thinking about it, but man did I want to drink it with a straw. Then dinner was the usual feeling that we were so tired and should eat but want nothing meal — crisps, pot noodles and I picked up a cinnamon caramel swirl. Lunch was definitely the highlight for food today.
