We checked out of our miniscule Swedish hotel and made our way by metro to the central station to catch the express train to the airport. The ride was pleasant and quick, taking only 20 minutes to get to Arlanda airport.
Soon we were up in the air on our way to Reykjavik. The flight took about 3 hours and finished with the toughest landing yet, the IcelandAir pilot clearly thinking that it was necessary to give a signal that we had arrived, by slamming the plane into the ground from about 3 metres in the air. Everyone on the plane looked around in disbelief as it was such a smooth journey the whole way.
Once we had disembarked we made our way to the FlyBus, to get into Reykjavik. The bus took around 40 minutes, and passed through dramatic lava fields on the way. We had to stop and change for a smaller bus to take us to our part of the 'city'. The bus driver was a grumpy Englishman on his last shift. He dropped us somewhat near our Airbnb flat, but we had to walk a few blocks to get there.
As it was still light and not too cold, we dropped our bags and walked into town. We walked from our northern quarter of town through a nice suburb, and past an old Gothic church to get to the main part of town. Once we got there we looked around and got our bearings before walking up one of the main streets. There were lots of shops and the street was quite touristy, and it wasn't long till we realised that the road lead up to the iconic Reykjavik church called Halgrímskirkja. Mick was starving so he stopped to get a slice of pizza and Damian was eager to take phots of the church, so the plan was (in Mick's mind) for Damo to walk to the corner, take some photos and then meet back outside the pizza place. Damian thought the plan was quite different, and walked all the way to the church and stayed there for 20 minutes. After the first 5 minutes of waiting, Mick decided Damian had forfeited any pizza that may have been offered; by the 10 minute mark Mick started getting annoyed and didn't know what to do, as he could see the corner that photos were meant to be taken from. After 20 min Mick signed into a free wi-fi and sent Damian a SOS message.
Damian quickly returned to find Mick, and then they walked back up to the church. Damian said he didn't spend much time there taking photos (which Mick denies as he was watching the clock!), however Damo did direct Mick to the perfect photo spot, a difficult to find vantage point, away from all the tourists - so clearly he had enough to time to discover that!
The church itself has a beautiful but brutal architecture, inspired by the volcanic basalt columns of the Icelandic coast. The inside was equally austere, but this was offset by an organist who was playing such a bizarre, almost Dracula-esque piece of music that we expected bats to start flying through the windows.
We went outside to decide where to go for dinner. This was when we noticed the temperature had dropped dramatically, and we were now freezing! We luckily had fairly warm coats, but even so we decided to try a local place just around the corner, so we didn't have to go far. The place (called Vitabar) was small, but the food was great and fairly cheap and the barmaid was very friendly (this could be due to the three beers we saw her drink during our dinner). We had a simple steak meal - but the steak was so good, and the pepper sauce so tasty, that Damian thought it might even be in his top ten steaks ever! Croatia v Russia was on the TV and the whole bar, including the staff were wrapped with the coverage.
Once our steaks and the match were over we made the cold walk home, which seemed much longer than on the way in. We packed up our bags for an early checkout in the morning to go to the hotel to meet our tour group, and settled in for the cold night.
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