Date: March 12th, 2023
Location: Reykjavík, Iceland (and then finally, back home)
Once again, I woke up around 8:00 AM. Getting up this morning was bittersweet. On one hand, I'm happy to be going home soon. I miss my friends back there, and I just have so much I want to show people about my time in Iceland. And I miss the weather at home. A lot. But I also really enjoyed my time here. I'm going to miss the people I met and just all of the experiences I had. It's such a beautiful country and there's so much left to do in Iceland that I wish I had a little more time. But oh well. I had a blast here either way.
After getting all packed up and moving my stuff around to ensure everything can fit as snuggly as it did when I first arrived, I went downstairs to grab some breakfast. Once again, it was toast and fruit. But I made sure to grab some cheerios and orange juice for extra fuel and then brought down my bags to be brought to our bus. Everyone from our program was milling around the lobby of Midgard, getting ready to go as well. Eventually, a bus came at 9:00ish to take us and all our stuff so we packed everything inside and piled on. But we weren't going straight to the airport. We had one last stop for our trip- Reykjavík!
It was around a 45-minute drive to Reykjavík (and around a 40-minute nap for me). While on the bus ride though, we found out that it was a girl from our program's birthday two and that two other girls had a birthday a couple of days after the trip ended. So, our program guides taught us how to sing Happy Birthday in Icelandic. Safe to say, it was extremely difficult and we were all struggling to remember the words and the pronunciation. But it was fun, either way.
Unfortunately, it was still pretty cold. Too cold to take pictures most of the time, but I did try! The sun was out and shining, which helped. But Reykjavík is a seaside city and I knew the winds were going to be brutal again. So I made sure to bundle up before getting out. Even though I'm going to miss Iceland, I am very much over this wind!
Our bus let us off towards the middle of the city- right next to a church called Hallgrímskirkja. Apparently, it's the tallest church in Iceland and I heard somewhere that you can get the best view of the city from the very top. It would have been nice to visit and go inside, but we only had about three and a half hours in the city, so I decided to skip the tour and walk the streets of Reykjavík instead! I joined up with another girl from my program (her name was Eleanor) and we decided to first hit a nearby gift shop to pick up a souvenir while waiting for a nearby cat cafe!
At this store, I managed to pick up a nice sweatshirt for myself and some chocolate for my parents to try while looking around at a few other things. I felt like such a tourist in there! I wanted to buy so many things. But I had to think of the space I have left in my bags and how expensive everything was (like seriously, everything was so expensive that even the locals had something to say) so I tried to keep it at a minimum. Besides, I still had a couple more things left to buy. But to our surprise, a cat was sitting on the checkout counter! It was really cute and looked super content just sitting and watching me spend all my money on souvenirs. I had heard a couple of times that Reykjavík was a city of cats so I guess it should have been expected. But then again, I had spent a lot more time with dogs on this trip than cats (even though Icelanders have only recently started having dogs are pets rather than work animals) so seeing this cat was a nice surprise nonetheless.
After finishing up at that gift shop, Eleanor and I went to the cat cafe! It was a super adorable space and we were able to sit inside for free! But I still wanted to grab a little thing of juice while sitting at a table and petting a nearby cat. I was pretty jealous of another lady who was in there though- a cat had been sitting and falling on her lap since before we got there and didn't seem like it was going to move for absolutely anything. We didn't spend too much time inside the cafe- just long enough to get our snacks and to pet some cats. And soon enough, we were outside again, walking the streets and hitting up more stores.
We walked on this street called Rainbow Street which was painted with very bright, vibrant colors to show (you guessed it) a rainbow! There were a bunch of gift shops on that street so we went into those and shopped around a little more. Though at the very end of the street, we saw a Hard Rock Cafe! We went inside and I was super tempted to buy a t-shirt or a sweatshirt or something. I was even thinking about asking if we could stop for lunch. That American food was looking pretty good after a whole week of unfamiliar cuisine. But the price immediately turned me away. If I thought things were expensive before, I should have known that a place like the Hard Rock Cafe would have crazy prices- especially since it was in Iceland of all places. But it was still nice to stand inside for a couple of minutes so we could get out of the cold.
Though after a little while, we decided to walk around some more. We walked a couple of blocks until we came across this pretty big pond in the middle of the city. The majority of it was frozen over but towards the middle of the pond, a guy was having a grand ole' time ice skating his heart out. But right in front of us was kind of a funny sight- there was a small (small about the entire thing, at least) portion of the pond that wasn't frozen over, and it was filled to the brim with ducks and geese swimming around in circles. A couple of nearby kids were throwing food into the water and that caused a brawl or two between some fowl-mouthed ducks (haha) but it was just cute to see.
And funnily enough, Eleanor took a picture of where we were to show to her parents, and her parents responded immediately with a picture of the same spot ten years ago! It looked completely the same: same buildings, mostly frozen-over pond with a couple of birds, same signs, same everything! Apparently, they went before when they were on their own trip to Iceland so it was really sweet seeing how they all ended up in the same spot by chance after years and years went by.
After that, we did a few more stops at some interesting places, grabbed some snacks and I was able to pick up a couple of more souvenirs. I had already gotten everything I wanted for myself like a sweatshirt and keychain, but I was hoping I could find something special for my mom and dad. And I already had in mind what I wanted to get them so the real trouble was finding the actual items themselves.
For my mom, I wanted to get a Christmas ornament. Specifically, I wanted an ornament bulb. My mom loves Christmas, (we have about four Christmas trees) and she always loved getting ornaments that show off important places in our life or just cool places that someone in our family has been. But I was having no luck finding a bulb that didn't have a troll or an elf on it so I decided to get some nice-looking wooden ones that said "Merry Christmas" Icelandic on them for now, hoping that I would come across something better.
For my dad, I wanted to get a travel book. My dad has been to so many places because of being in the military and for work and I always loved hearing about his travels. But one of the best parts about his travels was that he usually tried to pick up a travel book from the places that he visited back in the 90s. Some of the books I remember from his collection include some from Prague in Czechia, Seoul in South Korea, Mumbai/Bombay in India, and a few about the entire country like Israel. And that's not even all of the books and everywhere he's been. When I went to Spain in high school, I made sure to get a book that talked about the city I stayed in (Granda) to add to my dad's collection. So I knew easily that I had to make sure I got a book about Iceland too.
Though the problem was that the majority of the books were more so pictures of landscapes and animals. And if they weren't that, then they were story books and retelling of folklore. While the picture books were beautiful and the folklore books were funny with all their dramatic drawings, I was hoping for one with more history about the country. Even though Iceland isn't that old of a country (both because it's a geologically recent island and it was settled only about 1,000 years ago) it has a super rich history and culture. But alas, I wasn't able to find was I was looking for. So I settled with a really good-looking picture book that had descriptions of famous landscapes in Iceland and bought that.
All too soon, it was 2:00 PM and everyone in my program began piling onto the bus again to get ready to drive to the airport. Part of me wished we had more time to explore Reykjavík. An even bigger part of me wished that the weather in Reykjavík was a bit warmer too. But you don't always get what you want. Still, I had a fantastic time walking and around and seeing a bunch of the sights. It's such an amazing city and I hope to one day come back! Of course, that'll have to be sometime in the summer when the wind chill makes things feel like they're freezing, rather than below freezing! But as much as I wanted to stay in Reykjavík and see some more things, I knew it was truly time for us to go. In fact, it was kind of past time for us to go. Because we were leaving the city at 2:00 PM to take another 45-minute drive to the airport we were all flying out of.
My flight was at 4:50 PM. Yeah... it went about as smoothly as you could expect.
When we got to the airport, everyone was in a flurry of emotions. We were all sad and giving each other big hugs and well-wishes since we knew it was likely that we would never see each other all together like this ever again. But we were also kind of stressing because we only had an hour and a half to get our bags checked, get through security, and run to our gates before they close!
Still, I managed to get in a heartfelt goodbye to our program guides and the people who didn't go to Penn State. Eleanor, the girl who I spent the day with was one of them so I was really sad about that but she told me that I could come to visit her (and the beach she lived ten minutes away from) whenever I wanted. I also made sure to give one last hug to my new friend from California and to get one in for the two people from England as well! But before you knew it, I was inside the airport, running back and forth between self-check-in kiosks and bag check counters because every single machine in there was going haywire for a while. After a good 15 minutes of dealing with that, I was finally able to get to security- which took me another 15 minutes of waiting to get everything cleared and checked out.
Once I was cleared and able to get into the terminal, I quickly went to the closest shop to find something that I could eat on my six-hour flight back home. At this point, it was about 3:50 PM and I saw a sign that said my gate letter and "20 minutes" so I figured I had some time. But while in the shop, I finally saw it! Christmas Ornaments! But not just any Christmas ornaments- bulbs with a painted picture of the northern lights on them! Even though I had already spent a lot of money on souvenirs and I was running dangerously low on space (and strength to hold up my ridiculously heavy backpack), I knew I just had to buy the Christmas ornament. I forgot completely about getting something to eat and immediately went to buy it, figuring I could go ahead and find something small around my actual gate since I was able to get out of the shop in less than five minutes.
Well, it turns out that the sign that said my gate letter and "20 minutes" on it wasn't talking about how long it took to walk there from my current location like I thought it did. Turns it out it refers to the wait time for the customs line to leave Iceland. At least, I think it was customs. I'm still not entirely sure what the purpose was. We had already had our boarding passes and passports scanned on top of being asked if there were things that we wanted to declare. But this was something I don't remember doing in Spain. And I never heard of it in general. Still, I got in the long, long line to get our boarding passes and passports scanned and managed to make it out of that line by around 4:15. Then I had around a ten-minute walk to my actual gate and was able to make it to the long, long line of passengers waiting to get on that particular flight (with just enough time to spare grabbing some strawberry- flavored skyr).
Eventually, I was able to make it onto my plane, alongside everyone from my school who I knew was on my flight. It was definitely one of my most stressful airport experiences but what matters most is that we made it! After that, things weren't too eventful. Take-off went off without a hitch, and I spent most of my time sleeping, doing homework, watching a movie, and wishing I had the chance to go to the bathroom before getting on my flight. But our plane got to fly over Greenland though! That was beyond cool.
After a couple of hours, I was back on American soil. I got off the plane and went through American customs. Which was completely empty, by the way! The only people who were there were just the people who got off the plane with me! And I was among some of the first in line too! But I got through customs, grabbed my luggage from the carousel, said goodbye to the other Penn Staters who were waiting in the same area, and got picked up by Dad. After a full week in Iceland, I was finally home.
And that's it for my adventures in Iceland! Thank you so much for sticking with me on my journey! I hope you enjoyed everything that you read and all the pictures that you saw! I really enjoyed sharing them with you! Well, thanks again! Until next time!
- DD
Picture Sources (in order of appearance):
View of the sea by Reykjavík 1! - My photo!
View of the sea by Reykjavík 2! - My photo!
Cat at the Cat Cafe - My photo!
Hard Rock Cafe: Reykjavík - My photo!
Birds in the pond - My photo!
Flying Over Greenland! - My photo!
Hey DD, the pictures you took were so beautiful. Iceland has some wonderful scenery and a rainbow who knew. I enjoyed the northern lights, even though the weather was cold and windy I am glad you had this experience. Love You, aunt Sandra.