Day 1 - From Keflavik airport to Reykjavik (60 kms)
We landed at Keflavik Airport at 10h15, on 1 June. When you approach the airport, you look outside the window and, you really feel like landing outside of Planet Earth. I think it’s the closest to land on the moon that we can experience. It’s one unique experience and, i really recommend it. If we were excited whit our trip, we got a lot more.
Keflavik Airport it’s a small but very functional airport. It didn’t take a lot of time for us to leave the airport. We talk earlier at the Duty-free experience, you can check it in a previous post.
We rented our car at Thrifty a few months before our travel. Taking into account they stay less than 1km outside the airport, they have a shuttle that is very efficient and, even toe we just missed one trip (we were looking at the van inside the airport when it was leaving outside) it was less than 15 minutes before it come again. We can wait inside the airport and, just when the van arrives, we go outside. We were a little afraid of the cold (we come from sunny Portugal) but, when we leave the airport, it wasn’t so bad at all. A little like our Portuguese winter and, the good news was that it wood be the coldest that we wood get at Iceland. I think we were really lucky about that.
We’ve booked a Ford Focus for the trip but, when we arrived, they give us a cool Citroen C4 Cactus, Diesel. It was brand new and, we have to say it was a great company for the trip. We don’t have any complains about the rental car, all perfect. Renting the car form 1 June to 8 was €336, plus €24 of the booster seat for the child.
We headed straight to Reykjavik. One thing that a lot of people do is to go to the Blue Lagoon just after arriving the airport, and that’s because it´s on the way to Reykjavik bus, we had a friend joining us for the trip and, his plain arrived later that day, so we leave that experience for the end of our trip.
The trip to Reykjavik is easily done, especially using GPS. We use MAPS.ME , its free and it works great. But, even without GPS its easy to travel from airport to the capital, just follow the signs.
We tried to book our stay near the center, so we can se the most we can on foot and enjoy the few hours on Reykjavik. Its not a BIG city, but its very pretty, we really love it.
We left the car on the parking lot of the church Hallgrímskirk Map because its free and, very close of our room, that was located on Laugavegur, that could be considerer the principal street of Reykjavik.
In the nest post, we will descrive how we plan the day to see the most we could of the city. See here our one day itinerary in Reykjavik for a family trip.