We made it to Iceland!

July 24, 2023

We made it to Iceland! This was one of the trips we planned to do in 2020... but for obvious reasons, it didn't happen...

We had an overnight flight from Toronto to Reykjavik which went very smoothly. We paid extra for the exit row to try to make it more comfortable and were lucky enough to be the only two in our set of three seats! I was able to sleep for most of the flight... but Steve did not. For some reason he just can't sleep on a plane.

We picked up our rental car when we arrived and drove straight to the Blue Lagoon which is located close to the airport. 

Helpful hint: We got both the GPS and the wifi for our rental car. The GPS was one of those little Garmin things and was really not helpful. It often couldn't find what we were looking for (we didn't know how to type it properly in Icelandic probably) and was sometimes taking us in an obviously wrong direction. The wifi hotspot was super helpful. Not only could we look up things we needed info about, but we just ran google maps through the phone which was much better at navigating and let me type things with English letters. If we did it again we wouldn't bother with the GPS, just get the wifi hotspot.

We had booked our Blue Lagoon tickets online before we left. You can pick different packages, we just took the basic one which was the cheapest (but still not cheap!) In our package we got entrance, one mask in the pool and one free drink of our choice. This was more than adequate.

The Blue Lagoon was amazing!

When you enter the Blue Lagoon you go through a little cave that has seats in it, then come out into the lagoon. 

Some spots of the lagoon are warm and some near the little boxes are super hot… Steve liked those spots best. There was plenty of room for everyone to spread out. We were there from about 11:00 - 1:00, but noticed many many MANY more people were arriving as we left, so I’d recommend coming in the morning if you are planning a trip here.

Included with your basic lagoon package you get a silica mask. If you get the upgrade you can get anti-aging or purifying masks. I don’t know that it’s worth paying more for that. 

You also get one drink included with your entry in the basic package. They have alcoholic and non-alcoholic choices. Steve got some kind of healthy thing with carrots and ginger (which was good)… I got the cherry slushy (which was excellent!)

We thought we might get something to eat in the cafe at the Blue Lagoon on the way out until we saw the prices. I have included a photo as evidence 😀 For currency exchange purposes you just put a decimal two spaces in to do a pretty close conversion to CAD. For example something that is 3290 ISK is about $32.90 Canadian. We did not feel like we wanted to spend that much money on those little wraps!

We googled grocery stores near me and found one on the way to where we were headed next. It ended up being a convenience store so had fewer choices and higher prices. If you come to Iceland I would recommend looking for a Kronan or a Bonus grocery store. We were so hungry we ended up a the pizza place next to the convenience store which had a buffet… so at least Steve sort of got his money’s worth!

Next we drove to Porufoss which was our first Icelandic waterfall. This one is not on the main tourist trail, and is basically just visible from a parking lot off a highway. We thought it was beautiful. If you’re headed that way (it’s on the way to Thingvellr and the Geysir) you may as well make a five minute stop to see it.

At this point I was constantly reminding Steve to stay awake while he was driving, so we skipped Thingvellr and headed straight to our hotel which was across the street from the geysers. Thankfully we made it in one piece and went for a 2 hour nap! Afterwards we had snacks from our convenience store visit for dinner, watched some very VERY strange TV, and then headed to bed.