In which Layla and Roz fall in love with Reykjavik and do some Arctic paddleboarding

By Layla

We were delighted upon late arrival in Reykjavik to find that our AirBnB apartment was fabulous – spacious, stylish, and central. And then even more delighted to find that Reykjavik was also fabulous. When I visited 13 years ago it felt a bit of a backwater whose claim to fame was its penis museum. It now has beautiful streets lines with quirky boutiques, cool cafes, stylish bars and restaurants, street art everywhere, a fancy concert hall, an entire road painted in rainbow stripes in celebration of LGBT pride, and of course delightful views out over the water to the volcanic skyline. We dashed up and down the street joyfully, popping into a grocery store to stock up on self-catering supplies, and finished the evening in a gloriously cool coffeeshop round the corner from our flat, drinking Icelandic beers by candlelight and wondering if in fact we should move to Reykjavik.

We dragged ourselves out of bed early the next day, wondering why we’d booked an all-day hike for our first day. Then got into a grump when they were late picking us up after our efforts. But pick us up they did, and our little minibus zoomed for a couple of hours across the Icelandic terrain, which essentially consists of one road and a lot of black lava rocks, very flat land, lots of sheep and horses, and of course the huge, looming volcanic rocks, formations and mountains. We stopped at one place where there was a very tall waterfall, picked up more people, then proceeded along what could charitably be called a dirt path, except the dirt was in fact big lava stones, and the whole thing regularly plunged into rivers, through which our four-wheel drive bus stoically bounced while we shrieked and grabbed things. We stopped off at a glacier, then got to the bottom of Fimmvorduhal, one of the most popular Iceland mountains/volcanoes for hiking. But wait: the bottom? We had explicitly booked a trip to hike across a pass along the top of the mountain and then down. Instead we were faced with up, up, up and I was wrathful. The guide from the company (Arctic Adventures) vaguely said they’d changed the itinerary due to snow on the pass when I queried it, then set off at a march. I growled bitterly and started climbing.

The walk was beautiful, with huge jagged peaks, crazy rock formations, lots of glaciers, a scattering of flowers, and a decent amount of sun. But when the shallow incline was about to become an unpleasantly steep ascent, and we became aware that we wouldn’t get home til 9:30pm, Roz and I decided that this was not what we had signed up for and took matters into our own hands. We smiled sweetly at a guide from another company and asked if we could hitch a lift home with his group. He sort of said yes, or something, in vague Icelandic tones. Then he and his group proceeded to leap down the mountain like athletic mountain goats while Roz and I stumbled and dashed to keep up, though now in a good mood at the prospect of getting home in time for dinner.

At the bottom of the mountain our lift turned out to be in the back of a covered pick-up truck, and our destination the waterfall. Thus proceeded a nerve-wracking, extremely bouncy ride on the bottom of the trailer, flying in the air and clinging on for dear life as lava stones zoomed past and water sprayed. Whenever the driver went through a river, it came in the windows. Still, it was fun and silly, but I was relieved when we got to the waterfall, just in time to catch the alleged public bus. Oh wait, no bus for 2 hours? Oh dear… We started smiling sweetly at tourists: “Are you by chance returning to Reykjavik?” “No.” Until finally I struck gold by approaching three Chinese people who didn’t seem to speak much English. My question seemed to confuse them into agreeing to drive us home, in a fancy, comfortable minibus. It soon transpired that they were Chinese diplomats. Hilarious.

The Chinese diplomats got us back to Reykjavik in record time and took us right to our apartment, so we delightedly had dinner at home, then popped into a cool little bar for happy hour wine and a cheese board, and thereafter to Bio Paradis, the coolest cinema in town, where we bought a giant bag of popcorn and settled down to watch an excellent film called “Red Army”. Then we had cocktails in a very cool bar.  An excellent evening, made all the sweeter by knowing we salvaged it from the prospect of no evening at all. Thanks random guide and Chinese diplomats!

The next day was our Reykjavik day and we started it with coffee/hot chocolate in a nice little coffeeshop, followed by a scenic walk around three downtown lakes on an attractive path lines with cool sculptures. We then had delicious soup and salad and bread I still dream of for lunch at Bergsson Mathus – an outstanding and very hip café. From there to the photography museum for various photo exhibits by Icelandic photographers – pleasant, and nice that it was on the top floor of the library. And then to the Icelandic Museum of Art, in a cool old warehouse building. They had some bizarre contemporary art exhibitions, the most disturbing of which was a teddy bear room where teddies were stuck together with wax in various shapes, their stuffing removed, etc.

We popped home to grab swimming costumes, then strolled along the sea wall path and up to another branch of the art museum, focused on an Icelandic sculptor who had built an architecturally exciting studio and left it and its contents to the city of Reykjavik. We were the only visitors and the staff member was plainly quite excited to see us and went to some lengths to ensure we had every bit of information we could possibly want.  He was adorable and it was jolly. And from there to Laugardalur swimming pool. Given the plethora of geothermal activity in Iceland, naturally heated outdoor pools are exceptionally popular. Alas for Roz, I’d vetoed the most famous touristy one, the Blue Lagoon, for being expensive and far away, and instead we went to the city’s public pool. This was very much fun – there were several swimming pools and hot tubs of different temperatures, so we swam laps in the slightly warm one, luxuriated in the 38 degrees one, sampled 40 degrees, looked in horror at people lowering themselves into 4 degrees, and went on the rather good waterslide. Not bad for about $5.

We failed to get a bus home and had to walk the 3km somewhat unwillingly, but got home quickly, cooked up a quick dinner, then returned to the lovely Bio Paradis cinema to see an Icelandic film called Virgin Mountain. They have a cool initiative to subtitle local films in English, and Virgin Mountain was great – funny, subtle, great performances. Oh, and more popcorn… Afterwards, cocktails and cheeriness.

The following day it was time for another tour, but Iceland weirdly starts its day tours in the afternoon, so we spent the morning doing a big list of chores (moving country, buying a new home, and furnishing it are more effort than you might suspect… actually, maybe less effort than you might suspect, but nevertheless, some effort has been required!). At any rate, we finished, went for a walk round the lakes in the opposite direction to add some thrill to our stroll, and returned to that delicious café for lunch. And then to the Old Harbour, to meet the Reykjavik bike tour people.

The standard tour in Iceland is called the ‘Golden Circle’ tour – a several-hour drive that takes you to a big waterfall (Iceland’s Niagara Falls), geysers (indeed the one after which all others are named), and the site of the ancient Icelandic parliament, where the EurAsian tectonic plate meets the American tectonic plate. Usually this is done by bus, but we had signed up to cycle. Luckily, given this involves several hours of driving, we didn’t have to cycle the whole thing. Instead our really excellent guide drove us most of the way, with two 15km stretches of glorious downhill cycling. The first was across farmland, with the ubiquitous volcanic backdrop – really fun. Then we walked around the big waterfall, which was lots of fun. And then watched the geyser erupting which was exceptionally cool – huge blasts of water about 20 metres into the air, every few minutes. We ate our packed dinner on a bench directly opposite – maybe the coolest ever dinnertime scenery. After the geyser fun, we drove to a backroad that went along a lake that exists between the two tectonic plates – these plates are moving apart an inch per year, and our next activity was to cycle between them. Having waved goodbye to America, we rather liked the idea of cycling back. And it was highly satisfactory: the lake was exceptionally pretty, the cycle was gloriously downhill, and it finished at a very clear demarcation of the plates, and the site of the ancient parliament. We got back quite late but still popped out to our local hipster coffeeshop for Icelandic beer (and a big slice of chocolate cake).

The next day heralded news of the successful purchase of our London flat, and a celebratory return to our favourite lunch spot – with a thrill when we spotted the female star of the Virgin Mountain film eating lunch next to us! Star struck, we finished our soup and dashed home for our third and final Icelandic tour: a paddleboarding adventure. Everyone who knows us knows that we love to paddleboard and try to do it wherever we travel. Iceland was a challenge… but then we found Arctic Surfers and paid an unpleasantly large sum of money for a day of adventure paddleboarding. In reality this turned out to be an afternoon of driving all over the place in a truck, peering at the water in a shivery gale, trying to find a fjord that was sufficiently non-wavy to facilitate paddleboarding. After a couple of false starts, an appropriate location was identified and we began the hilarious pursuit of donning wetsuits – much trickier than I’d imagined, but rewarding once suited up, and it protected from the freezing wind. Roz found it less rewarding, being allergic to the material. But off we went. The waves might have been smaller than the others but they were still very vigorous. I spent much of the first part shrieking and envisioning a plummet from my board into the freezing jellyfish-infested waters. Roz was incapacitated by itching from the suit. We were so busy trying to stay afloat that we barely even looked at the sweeping volcanic hills. It was all a bit unfortunate. Then, thankfully, the wind calmed down, Roz managed to wrestle herself partly out of her wetsuit, we ate our dinner sandwich perched on our boards, and then much more serenely paddled back to shore. Not sure we’d do that again, to be honest, but in retrospect, it was very cool. Back home in time for cheese and wine at a cool little French restaurant, before an early bedtime: we had to get up before the crack of dawn the next day to get to the airport for our final destination: Oslo! It is hard to believe our glorious mammoth trip is almost at an end. But not quite yet.