Finally... I arrived in Reykjavik (still trying to learn how to spell that properly) Thursday morning, after that brief layover in Seattle. The flight was pretty uneventful, but flying over northern Canada made it difficult to go to sleep. The geography is stunning. Arrived safe, despite a pilot named Benedict Arnoldsson. Was able to sleep a bit, but as the reality of the trip set in, that became a bit more difficult. Landed at KEY (about 50 minutes outside the thriving metropolis of Reykjavik, population 200,000), around 6:30 am, after an extremely lax customs review, caught a bus into town.

The rain was misting and it was pretty chilly on arrival, around 40 degrees F. (Let me know if you know how to make the degree symbol on a Mac!). I walked over to the tourist information center downtown and secured a room in a guest house, as well as a car for the following day for a driving tour of the Golden Circle and a trip out to a little fishing village on the Southwest Coast call Vik. Caught a nap and then walked around for a while. I love walking around new cities (if you can count Reykjavik as a city). The rain blew out and it got sunny, bringing a chill and some pretty serious winds.

Not surprisingly, it is a lot like Ireland, or Puerto Natales in southern Chile... there is a beauty through economy of means... there really are no construction resources, so the buildings are mostly pretty low stick framed structures with cheap siding (often corrugated tin). Most of the wood for the stick framing in harvested driftwood. Had some dinner and then met some folks at the Celtic Cross for drinks. I wasn't intentionally going to an Irish bar... I enjoy going to local establishments, however, it was Arthur Guinness' birthday, so they were celebrating with cheap (for Iceland) Guinness.

Iceland is a very expensive place. It tends to be more so as a solo traveler where you are not able to split costs of things like guest houses. Renting a car doesn't help the situation, throw a speeding ticket in the mix and and I am predicting about 5x over the cost/ day average. Luckily I'll have another 12+ months to bring that average down...

More from the Golden Circle later.