Travel To Iceland / Day 1: Reykjavik
We're off to Iceland! This marks the sixth trip in six months as we've returned to traveling the world. After this one week adventure we'll take the winter off before beginning our adventures again this spring with a Viking River Cruise to Netherlands. Because we'd traveled with Collette Travels in October to Hawaii and this Iceland adventure was also with Collette we qualified for courtesy transportation to and from the airport. So at 11 am a limousine arrived from Avanti Limousine to take us to the airport.
Our JetBlue flight to JFK in New York was delayed and so we arrived about half an hour late to the gate. But we landed at Gate 9 in Terminal 5 and our boarding pass said our flight on Icelandair was in Terminal 5. The board showed that the gate was Gate 4. We walked the short distance and saw that the flight at this gate was going to Boston. Wait....what? After looking around and not being able to figure it out we asked and discovered that Icelandair was in Terminal 7! It was quite the long walk to the air train which took us there and as we walked up to Gate 4 they announced that passengers could line up to board. Just enough time! The five and a half hour flight was smooth and when we landed we got off the plane outdoors where it was VERY brisk. Boarded a shuttle which took us to the terminal.
Cleared passport control easily (only one person ahead of us) and went to baggage claim. Waited for over forty minutes.....no luggage. Inquired and discovered that our bags had never been loaded onto the plane in New York. So we arranged to have them meet us tomorrow evening at our second hotel. We exited the baggage area and were met by our guide Cynthia. Within a short period of time our good friends Pam & Bob arrived and then our other good friends, Rene and John arrived. It's Rene's travel agency that had organized this trip. We'd met Pam & Bob on a Viking River Cruise in Portugal and we'd met Rene and John on our Avalon Waterways Cruise through Vietnam & Cambodia. We've been trying for years to reconnect with Rene & John and have kept in touch through Facebook. Pam and Bob you may remember were with us on the Puget Sound cruise in September 2021 and they will be joining us on two more adventures this year. But after we arrived at the hotel we had to deal with the no luggage for two days of activities - missing so much of our winter gear. And so, the first order of business was to collect "souvenirs" - that is to buy clothes to get us through our first day here and then tomorrow's tours.
We rested the rest of the morning and the early afternoon (arrived at 6 am, which was 1 am EST) - thankfully our rooms were ready for us. Then we met downstairs at 2pm for a walking tour of Reykjavik. Mixed reviews if I'm honest......really, REALLY needed to get out of the room and move about otherwise we'd have passed out and then been up in the middle of the night; also, a lot of interesting history and stories about the capital city of Iceland - the OLDEST capital city in Europe. But on the other hand we would walk a short amount of time and then the guide would talk for a good ten minutes or more - way too much detail and a lot of it more factual than anecdotal.......as we stood out in the cold. And the cold wasn't that bad, but the wind, when it kicked up man it was really cold. And the gusts, literally would knock you off balance! Still, good times.
Came back to the room for about an hour and then headed downstairs for the orientation meeting. Our guide Cynthia went through the week's itinerary and then all 45 of us introduced ourselves. Got our coats and walked to a local restaurant for an amazing meal overlooking the harbor. Tonight we originally were scheduled to go out on a boat in the harbor in search of the Northern Lights. It would have been very cold, but THE SHIP cancelled because of overcast skies - would not have seen anything. Look again tomorrow. On the schedule for tomorrow - do the Golden Circle Tour. We did this the last time we were here in Iceland and it's really cool with some amazing stops....then we head out to the east coast of Iceland to a new hotel. HOPEFULLY our luggage will be waiting for us!
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