Pretty much all flights from the US land in Iceland in the early morning hours. While 8am doesn’t sound awful, you must remember that it is 4 hours ahead of the Eastern time zone. So at what felt like 4am to our bodies, we landed in Keflavik.
Bleary-eyed, we waddled off the plane, found seats in the terminal, and tried to get some rest before our shuttle at noon. I was startled awake at 10am by my phone ringing. Looks like the shuttle is coming at 11 now, so we packed up and dragged ourselves through the airport.
I’ve never seen an empty, unattended passport control room before, but that’s what we encountered. It turns out that Keflavik doesn’t keep their border control stations manned at all times, which is a concept that had truly never crossed my mind as a possibility. After quite a bit of wandering, we eventually flagged down some airport employees who call for a border agent for us. He was certainly not pleased that we opted to rest rather than head straight to immigration with the rest of our flight.
What this illustrated to me was a major lost opportunity for Keflavik. In Frankfurt, the airport had these little sleeping pods one could rent by the hour with a twin bed (and, it turns out, enough room for a 2nd person to sleep on the floor if desperate). Schipol Airport in Amsterdam has Yotel – an in-terminal hotel with tiny double-bed and bath rooms one can rent overnight or by the hour. Keflavik has none of it. Yet I’d pay almost any price for a legitimate bed for a few hours after landing at 4am with barely 2.5 hours of sleep. Why Keflavik hasn’t embraced this business opportunity is beyond me.
After collecting our camper and making the half- hour trip to Reykjavik, we hit up Costco. I know that we were very tired because we basically bought an array of chips (which we almost never eat), some seltzer and Coke Zero, and a dozen eggs. Yeah, it was time to nap. We headed back to the camper and slept for an hour in the parking lot. Classy!
With a tiny bit more rest, we went to the Bónus grocery store (and obviously bought another reusable shopping bag with the pig on it!), then hit the road. I had hoped to stop at the Settlement Centre, but nobody’s heart was in it, so we drove on to our campsite.
I will never get used to the absolute omnipresence of geothermal activity in Iceland. We took a walk after parking the van in order to stretch our legs (and stay awake). Along the way, we encountered steaming rivers and boiling turf.
We had a 7pm date at Krauma thermal baths. Krauma is a series of small pools of varying warmth (36-41 Celsius), rather than a single large pool like the Blue Lagoon. I had hoped that an hour in some delightfully warm water would help us unwind after a very long first day, and that was certainly an accurate assumption. We lasted about an hour and then had to leave lest we fall asleep in the pools.
Back at the van, we dined on ham and cheese (or just cheese) sandwiches for dinner and were proud of managing that much given how tired we were. Yet despite the tired, it was oddly hard to fall asleep given that dark doesn’t really even begin until after 11pm this time of year. Or so my weather app says – I did manage to fall asleep before darkness fell given that every bone in my body ached for sleep by 9:30pm.
Vacation Days 