Iceland - Part 1

26 Dec 2015 . category: Travel . Comments
#Iceland

This begins a series of (retroactive) blog posts recounting my spring break 2014 trip to Iceland with Aaron Roper. Though Aaron was an experienced traveler, this was my first self-planned journey, and kicked off three years of increasingly interesting spring break trips!

The posts are more of a collection of funny stories and happenings from the trip, and less a true travel journal recounting the details of every city, waterfall, and mountain.

Introduction

I honestly don’t remember where the initial idea of going to Iceland came from, or even when Aaron and I decided to travel together. At the time, it seemed like an adventurous travel destination off the beaten path. Though hindsight reveals that this isn’t the case, as I’ve realized first that Iceland is a popular travel destination for Westerners, and second increased the bar for an “adventurous destination.”

Broadly, we set out to drive the entirety of Iceland’s famous Route 1, often termed the “Ring Road” as it (unsurprisingly) rings the island. As will become apparent through these blog posts, this was perhaps ill-advised, though made for some wonderful stories…

Day 1: Departure and Day in Reykjavik

After a scrumptious dining hall dinner, we left for Boston Logan, looking forward to a red-eye flight that would arrive in the wee hours of the morning to Keflavik Airport. Unfortunately, we both barely slept…and arrived incredibly tired but excited for a full day of sightseeing!

We first picked up what was to become the one constant in our lives over the next week, our trusty vehicle:

(photo from later in the trip). We were trying to travel on the cheap, and as such rented the smallest, cheapest possible car…a decision that we would later come to regret.

After driving into Reykjavik, we quickly saw the Icelandic equivalents of the Capitol, National Mall, Times Square, and St. Paul’s Cathedral…all in less than five minutes. Combined with our exhaustion and an unfortunate rain, we asked each other and ourselves why we had come to this strange and foreign country.

Next came the (in)famous Icelandic Phallological Museum. It contained a truly impressive array of penile objects, from actual whale penises to penis drawings to bowties made from animal penis skin. Everything was themed, for example, here’s the guestbook:

Aaron was thankfully just the requisite age to rent a vehicle in Iceland, and able to drive a stick-shift (both characteristics I did not possess). Unfortunately, the last time he had driven was in New Zealand, leading to a wonderful rush of adrenaline in the middle of the day when we briefly drove in the wrong lane!

For dinner, we went to a tiny seafood restaurant recommended by our trusty Frommer’s guidebook, where we saw whale fillets amongst more normal seafoods and Aaron bravely tried putrefied shark. At the end of the night, We contemplated going out to appreciate Reykjavik’s nightlife…but instead collapsed at our hostel and slept for 12 hours straight.

Other notable Reykyavik sites visited: Sculpture Garden, Hallsgrimkirkja, National Museum, and Perlan.

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