Day 1 - 2.8. Prague-Berlin-Reykjavik

Ivo arrived first directly from Warsaw after few hours of last emails and conf calls I had pleasure to show him a local pub in our village and introduce Kofola drink. Then last shopping to buy necessary  food and equipment for our trip. Jirka arrived at 2 p.m., after a quick check with Lufthansa we had to slightly repack our backpacks in order to reach maximum weight of 23kg each. Biggest issue was food. At 3 p.m. we finally left my house, Czech and German highways were without any surprises so we reached Berlin Tegel airport shortly before 7 p.m.

Ready to go, Tegel Berlin

After baggage drop off we took steaks and biers in Red Baron restaurant. Almost 4 hour flight was really exhausting, curry wurst served as dinner also didn’t help to survive in a full airplane. Nevertheless we touched the ground in Keflavik at 0:30 a.m. After arrival we had to summon our car rent company ATAK, nobody was waiting for us. 15 minutes after call a driver finally arrived and took us to their office. It took 1 minute drive and costs 20 EUR – perhaps most expensive taxi ever. That’s service called car pick up and drop off at the airport (20 EUR each way). Obviously this was just first example how Iceland will be expensive. Anyway after another 20 minutes of paper work we were quite sure that we are first customers served by this guy, he didn’t explain anything, only asked for sign off and then finally brought the car, no explanation, no word. At least we got, what was promissed, quite a new car. Happy that we have the car we jumped into our Grand Vitara and headed to Reykjavik. Around 2 p.m. we parked in front of our Radisson 1919. Quick showers and quickly to bed.

Night drive to Reykjavik

Reading this blog please understand:

1. Each day is logged with number and date
2. At bottom of each day you can find how many kilometres we drove, detailed maps with summary you can find here
3. Some days includes videos, rest videos you can find here
4. At the end I added few articles summarizing trip and experience

Drive 55km, road 41.

Day 10 - 11.8. Goodbye Iceland

We woke up later than usual there was no rush, rain behind the windows wasn’t really tempting. We took hotel breakfast and picked up few points to visit during our last day: a famous church, the biggest local shopping mall, a Museum of Saga and a Marine museum. First stop was the Marine museum close to a harbor. It was andinteresting exhibition describing fishery and marine life in Iceland from the past till now.

Marine museum

The rain was so mentally devastating that we decided to change topic and headed to the biggest Icelandic shopping mall Kringlan. Of course no big surprise everything was so expensive that it was impossible to find anything for a reasonable price. At the end I bought only some tourist staff there (including a puffin) and some shopping also happened in ZO-ON shop – Icelandic outdoor wear. Being hungry we decided to go back to center and checked a monumental church Hallgrimskirkja which you can find almost on every postcard from Reykjavik.

Hallgrimskirkja

We just met a wedding there so instead of waiting outside we took lunch in close Loki restaurant. Local menu was a little bit wild consisting of mostly local specialties. Most of the food was ok and eatable but the fermented shark was something hard to swallow. From the center we moved through the rain to Perlan - geothermal place on the hill above the city.

Perlan building

There is an interesting building here where you can find the most expensive restaurant and also Saga museum – our destination. Here we got mp3 players and earphones and took audio tour through the wax figurines.

Nice wax lady

After 30 minutes of listening we were totally destroyed and tired. Outside there was still raining it was too late for cinema, gay pride was still in the center, so last choice was small shop called Volcano house – café, shop and mainly mini cinema showing two short movies about Heimaey island and its Eldfell eruption and new one about Eyjafjallajokull eruption in 2010. After cinema time we took last dinner in Reykjavik at a restaurant with simple name Steakhouse. Food was good and we were sad we found this restaurant so late.

Vine menu powered by Kindle at Steahouse

After steaks and vine we took drive back to Keflavik airport. Car handover was smooth, I would even say that nobody really checked the car properly (good for us). At the airport we had plenty of time thanks to flight delay.

Keflavik airport

Ivo invited the whole crew to a small champagne closing party and around 1 a.m.local time we left Iceland heading back to Berlin. The whole trip was ok, mainly thanks to Jirka who was still able to drive at 6 a.m. back to Prague from Berlin. That’s it, end of story, only one thing I can add that Iceland was worth visiting and we will definitely come back again.

Last toast at Keflavik

Driving 60km, road 41