Reykjavik

Reykjavik, Hallgrimskirkja,
the "Tourist Church"

The post is entitled "Reykjavik" because, pretty much, that town is all we saw of Iceland. Plus, I now know how to spell the name.

A day in Iceland turned out to be critical for our European odyssey, but not because of what we had planned for sightseeing. It was critical for the warm clothes we had packed for our one day in Iceland. Most of what we packed — and we packed a lot — was suitable for the warm, sunny Greek climate. We were unprepared for cold rain in Hungary, and the continuation of cold autumn weather in Paris on the way home. After Greece, the few warm clothes we had packed became standard wear.

Our flight from Seattle arrived early in the morning. The plan was to pick up a rental car at the airport, drive a bit around the southwest coast of Iceland, then check into our Reykjavik hotel. Now Reykjavik airport (actually, Keflavik International Airport, which confused me until I got there) is a bit of a mess. It is quite busy and under expansion. It has very few jet bridges: the enclosed walkways that extend to meet the aircraft door. Quite charmingly, on most flights, stairs and busses are used to disembark and board passengers off the tarmac. I guess Icelanders are used to their inclement weather and visitors ought to adapt. Fortunately, it wasn't raining much when we landed. So between the tarmac, crowds, and construction, the airport was a bit challenging. But hey, we were up for the challenge. It's Iceland!

We proceeded out the doors from the baggage carousel area to the arrival hall, a huge room crowded with mournful travelers sitting on their baggage. They were waiting for their rides.

Here is a bit of travel advice. If you decide to rent a car from a discount outfit, plan on waiting in the arrival hall for a significant amount of time. For Shari and me at Keflavik, that was over an hour. Here is the explanation. Unless you rent from one of the big name outfits (Hertz, Avis, Budget, Eurocar, Enterprise, etc.), your car rental company does not have an office in the terminal. Its office is a few kilometers away. You have to connect with someone at the airport arrival hall who will drive you to the off-site office. That someone is one of any number of men and women staring at passengers as they exit the baggage claim area. They hold up signs identifying either their company or the names of the tired travelers who are their customers.

We were unprepared for this system. Our flight came in late, so it took forty minutes of hopelessly wandering around checking hand-held placards, a phone call by the lady at the information desk ("The man just left. He will be back soon."), and another twenty minutes for the owner of Orange Car Rental to show up.

Just the name "Orange Car Rental" should have warned us. The same thing happened at the Budapest airport where we had rented a car from the very un-Hungarian named "USave" outfit.

View of Reykjavik from our room at Radisson Blu

By the time I sat in the driver's seat of our Icelandic rental, a Nissan Versa diesel, I was pretty flustered. The owner turned out to be very gracious and even gave us the use of a Garmin e-navigation thingie without charge, but we had no idea how to use it. (Sorry, Irene. We use paper maps, the Google Map app, and the GPS on our smart phones.) The owner gave us directions to get to a buffet breakfast (we were hungry) and advice for the roads to take to do some nearby sightseeing on the island. Then he got called to return to the airport to pick up his next (perhaps equally tired and impatient) customer.

Now in Europe, it seems that all cars, at least cars for rent in the "intermediate" category, are keyless. I have seen a car like that here in Tucson, but I am clueless about keyless use. We have two old cars with regular keys. I have been inserting keys into the ignition for five decades. I sat in the driver's seat of that Versa with scattered thoughts bouncing around my fatigued head: the papers we had just signed, the owner's instructions about diesel fuel only, how to return the car, the emergency alarm button above the windscreen ("just so you know because if you push it, the police will come"), and his directions where to drive. I realized the my habits to start a car were useless. The fob that I held in my hand had no key, only a small pop-out rod. The owner had explained that the pop-out had some arcane application that I would not need, so I hadn't paid attention. I had to survey the unfamiliar dashboard loaded with LED screens and buttons, in the dark and without reading glasses. All the while I felt like I had to act as if I knew what I was doing. I was afraid to give the owner cause to worry that this idiot would crash his car. On that dash, instead of the familiar ignition keyhole, I located a button labeled "start." I pressed it. It wouldn't. Naturally, I blamed the car.

Fortunately, the owner hadn't pulled out of his parking lot. He reversed and rolled down his window. I fumbled rolling down my window. "Car won't start," I complained.

"Put your foot on the brake." I did and the Versa diesel started up.

The owner's directions to get to Viking Village and its buffet breakfast were,"Drive through about five roundabouts. Just keep going straight. You can't miss it." I did. My flustered mind heard "Viking House" so I drove by the sign and we got lost.

Things were not going well. Shari and I decided it would be a sufficient accomplishment to find our way to Reykjavik and locate our hotel, the Radisson Blu. That we did, thanks to Google Maps and the GPS inherent in smart phones nowadays. (Had we plugged in "Viking Village" when we downloaded the Iceland map in Tucson, we would have found it, too.)

It was in this way that our experiences of Iceland were limited to Reykjavik.

Fortunately, our hotel room was ready. Unfortunately, there was a lot of construction going on so the elevators on our wing of the building were out of operation. Moreover, it was too late to get any breakfast at the hotel, nor could we make a reservation for dinner at the hotel. It was all booked up. We looked at the Asians crowding the lobby with jealousy. We suspected they probably had dinner reservations.

Our hotel was close enough to the city center that we donned our warm layers and coats, walked there, looked around a bit, and became confused by the strangeness of cuisine options: Italian, Punjabi Indian, Japanese, English, Irish, and American (Tommi's Burger Joint, Ruby Tuesday, Subway, and American Style, among others). Why eat foreign food in Iceland that we can get in the US? We spent a lot of time looking at different posted menus, humbled by Icelandic prices. We walked up the hill to the iconic landmark of Reykjavik, the Hallgrimskirkja (or, as one local called it, the "Tourist Church"). The $12 entrance fee per person to ride the lift up the tower was too much, the line of tourists too long, and our hunger too great. We decided upon lunch at a bistro.

Shari ordered a hamburger. I got the fish and chips and a local beer. The food was great, the beer always goes down well, and we were $65 poorer.

We had lunch at this place, Hressingarskálinn Bistro & Pizzeria.

We returned to our room apprehensive about dinner. Shari rested as the cold, damp, dark environment triggered her aches and pains. Restless, I went for another walk, this time to check out the old harbor (not much to it) and scout out more restaurants. I walked by a neat town square complete with skate-boarders, Reykjavik's oldest building (the house at Aðalstræti 10, built in 1772), and generally enjoyed the town's narrow, dark grey cobble stoned streets. Actually, the underlying canvas in Reykjavik, and certainly the dreary, treeless, flat, 50 km. drive from the airport, is dark grey, almost black. Near black is the color of the lava that makes Iceland stick out from the northern Atlantic. The bleak canvas is completed with overcast weather and drizzle.

Reykjavik's oldest (the short dark one) built in 1772

As it turned out, there were great restaurant choices in the old harbor area, unlike the commercial area where we had wandered earlier in the day. We returned by car. I had to back-up a few times on account of driving into one-way streets the wrong way, and I also mistakenly entered narrow dead-end streets in our search for a parking space. We parked in a pay-lot where we waited until 5:55 PM because parking was free at six. I would have gladly paid the parking fee, but the ticket-dispensing machine was labeled in Icelandic (a Germanic, Old Norse language fraught with odd combinations of strangely accented letters) and, in my defense, even a local was unable to get the machine to accept his money.

We decided upon a place with outside seating, partially protected by mold-stained plexiglass, where local tattooed hipsters smoked vapes and sipped coffee or beer. We sat inside and ordered a Caesar salad and a traditional Icelandic fish stew — a thick potato-based chowder with tiny pieces of different fish. Overall, the stew was a bit bland, but satisfying.

That night, the stress of that day took its toll on me. In addition, I worried about the need to wake up early in the dark morning, find a gas station to top up the Nissan, and drop off the car at the congested and confusing Keflavik Airport so early in the morning that Orange Car Rental would not be open. "Just park the car in P-one and leave the fob and the parking ticket inside," the owner had explained. I couldn't get back to sleep. I hit a wall. I worried about making it through the almost one-month European itinerary. I worried about the money we had to spend. I worried about getting to Keflavik Airport on time, whether we could find "P-one" in the dark, and whether the rental would be stolen and our credit card charged. I worried about airports and rentals to come. I worried about pretty much everything we had planned.

After an hour of sleeplessness, I rationalized, "How bad can it be?" I fell back to sleep. Such anxiety did not plague me for the rest of the trip. In this sense also, Iceland proved to be critical for our European odyssey.

Our one day in Iceland also served as entry into the European union. It was the only immigration we had to go through, and that was a breeze. The lady at the Icelandic immigration counter simply asked Shari, "How long are you staying in Iceland?" Shari replied only for the one day. The officer stamped our passports and that was it. We walked through. Everywhere else, in France, Greece and Hungary, we never showed our passports. We just walked in.

Shari insists we include praise for Icelandair and Saga business class, and that praise is well deserved. We don't know how it was in the cheap seats, but Saga class was extravagantly comfortable. We enjoyed our segregation from the crowded economy area. Entering a Boeing 757-200 from the jet bridge, economy passengers turned right. Saga class passengers turned left. The flight attendants were as efficient as they were stunningly attractive. We had cloths to cover our trays, cloth napkins, tableware more solid than in most restaurants, menus and excellent food, and our choice of aperitifs, wines, beers, spirits, and digestifs.

We never did ask why scores of Icelandic girls
were dressed in white smocks and nurse caps.

Oh, it turned out that the "P1" parking lot at Keflavik Airport was clearly marked and located right by the airport entrance, and there is virtually no crime in Iceland. We breezed onto our flight to Paris, but not before feasting in the Icelandair Saga lounge. That's a spaciously large living and feasting room for business class passengers. Its buffet was loaded with hearty goodies and equipped with a self-serve espresso machine. Open bottles of brandy and expensive liqueurs were posted by the coffee machine, unattended. Though I was tempted, it was a bit early.

Shari has a final observation about Reykjavik. Pretty much the only older people we saw were tourists. The locals were all young adults and teenagers. Maybe the older Icelanders and their young children stay indoors. We didn't ask. But I must add the Icelanders we saw were pretty hip and friendly, and they spoke English very well.