A little later than planned, I'm finally writing about our trip to Iceland that happened in January.
For my birthday in December, the lovely Mr Hill booked for us to go to Iceland. We arranged to go away in January to get Christmas and the likes out of the way.
Mid-January rolled round and saw us leaving at 3am to drive to the airport to fly to Iceland. It was pretty chilly, but nothing like what we knew to expect once we reached Iceland. A short 3 hour flight saw us landing in Reykjavik's international airport, Keflavik. After we cleared through security we went to pick up our hire car which was going to be our main mode of transport for the 4 days we had to explore the country. It was a bit of a surprise to find ourselves with a Hyundai i10 as our mode of transport, but we quickly learned that it didn't matter what make and model the car was, as long as it had snow tyres on, this was all that mattered in the icy and snowy environment!
We had a short 20 minute drive straight down to our hotel from the airport as Paul had booked for us to stay on the outskirts of Reykjavik. Once we had offloaded our cases and got all our layering in order (trust me - you need plenty of layers in Iceland!) we decided to drive into Reykjavik itself to do some exploring and get some food.
Food saw us stopping at KRÖST for a late lunch/early dinner. We found this place after a quick scroll through TripAdvisor for somewhere that did steak. It was a little difficult to find at first, as it is within a covered market of restaurants and eateries, but once we found it, it did not disappoint!
After finally having had a proper meal (this was about 2/3pm in the afternoon, and we hadn't eaten anything properly since breakfast in the airport at 6am), we were ready to head on exploring. We were quite tired from a day of travelling so didn't want to do too much, but eventually settled on going to visit Iceland's largest church, and it certainly didn't disappoint!
Hallgrimskirkja is at the top of a hill, and is a strong and intimidating sight. Not necessarily what you would expect from a church. Once you were inside though it was warm and welcoming. For a small fee you can go up in the elevator to the tower where the views of the city are incredibly stunning.
After the church we walked around for a little while longer and just enjoyed getting a bit of a feel for the city. As it started to head towards evening, we decided to head back to the hotel to relax for a bit and have a few beers before getting an early night ahead of what would be a very busy few days in Iceland.
We had a short 20 minute drive straight down to our hotel from the airport as Paul had booked for us to stay on the outskirts of Reykjavik. Once we had offloaded our cases and got all our layering in order (trust me - you need plenty of layers in Iceland!) we decided to drive into Reykjavik itself to do some exploring and get some food.
Food saw us stopping at KRÖST for a late lunch/early dinner. We found this place after a quick scroll through TripAdvisor for somewhere that did steak. It was a little difficult to find at first, as it is within a covered market of restaurants and eateries, but once we found it, it did not disappoint!
After finally having had a proper meal (this was about 2/3pm in the afternoon, and we hadn't eaten anything properly since breakfast in the airport at 6am), we were ready to head on exploring. We were quite tired from a day of travelling so didn't want to do too much, but eventually settled on going to visit Iceland's largest church, and it certainly didn't disappoint!
Hallgrimskirkja is at the top of a hill, and is a strong and intimidating sight. Not necessarily what you would expect from a church. Once you were inside though it was warm and welcoming. For a small fee you can go up in the elevator to the tower where the views of the city are incredibly stunning.
After the church we walked around for a little while longer and just enjoyed getting a bit of a feel for the city. As it started to head towards evening, we decided to head back to the hotel to relax for a bit and have a few beers before getting an early night ahead of what would be a very busy few days in Iceland.
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