Iceland - Western Iceland to Reykjavík

We woke up after a very windy last night in our Dacia-top tent, and had breakfast in the common room. After breakfast we drove back down the road to the house where we were told the showers were. The girl who had greeted us yesterday told us that while it may feel like someone lived there, it was totally fine to user the showers. I went first, and it felt very weird walking through what was obviously someone's lounge and kitchen, to a bathroom. When Katie came back from her shower, she said she was paranoid the whole time that someone was going to come in and stab her! Luckily we didn't meet anyone, and the shower was otherwise nice.

We drove to Reykjavík through the Hvalfjörður tunnel, which crosses a fjord in seven minutes, instead of the hour it would have taken to drive around the coast line. It had originally been a toll road costing 1000kr, and the government had expected to require a toll for at least 20 years to pay back the construction cost. Because of tourism it was paid off far earlier and the toll was removed in September 2018, and now they're considering building another tunnel parallel to the existing one to better cope with the amount of traffic.

We found a carpark on the side of the road in the middle of town, and found a trendy cafe where we drank 7000kr coffees. Katie did some research while we were waiting for the caffeine to kick in and found a free walking tour that was starting shortly.

We arrived at the tour's meeting point right on time, and went on a guided walk around the very small city. We learned about Iceland's independence from Denmark, some political protests following the financial collapse, and how tourism has transformed the country and its economy. Fishing had been the country's largest industry until being overtaken by tourism. At the end of the tour we discovered that it wasn't actually free, and a tip was expected. Unfortunately for the guide his mobile EFTPOS terminal had run out of batteries and we didn't have any cash!

We walked around the harbour a bit further to see the CCP offices and the EVE Online monument. I unfortunately realised after we were back home that I'd missed the entire point of the monument; it has the names of every active character as of March 31st 2014 engraved on it, including mine! We walked back to the Icelandic Street Food shop that had been pointed out to us on our tour and had some lamb soup.

For our last stop in Reykjavík, we walked up the main shopping street to Hallgrímskirkja, a Lutheran church which is both the largest church and second tallest building in Iceland. The church was finished in 1986 after 41 years of construction, and is modeled to resemble the mountains, glaciers, and rock formations of the country's landscape.

At last, we drove back to Keflavík, stopping to fill up the diesel and give the car a clean. Most of the gas stations that we'd seen around the island have free car-cleaning bays, with scrubbing brushes connected to long hoses. It was raining, and the car scrubber leaked all up my sleeves, so even though I was wearing a rain jacket I still got soaked. We dropped the car off at the new office of the rental company (they had relocated while we'd been driving around the island, we got an email letting us know where to find them when we got back), and they dropped us off at the airport. Their offices were made out of converted shipping containers sitting in the middle of a lava field, which was very flat, open, and barren.

We finished the afternoon off with an Icelandic craft beer at the airport. While we were sitting at the bar we discovered that our flight had been delayed for at least another, so we had more beers. Of course we then needed some snacks, so we ordered a pizza. This took longer than expected, which meant that we were almost late for the flight! Our flight took us over Greenland, and we got an incredible view of the southern regions!