Our first glimpse of Iceland was from the plane as it descended towards Keflavik. Pretty much everywhere we'd been so far had not been as wintery as we'd expected, we'd had a little snow in Japan but it had soon disappeared. Our thermal clothing had remained untouched in our suitcases. But seeing the flat white expanse of Iceland below us made it pretty obvious we'd be needing our warmer clothes soon.
Keflavik airport was modern and efficient and it was only as we were leaving that we realised that despite having technically left the EU we hadn't gone through any passport control. That didn't stop us being able buy duty free - some Icelandic vodka and an Icelandic liquor that had moss in the bottle! We caught up with our friend Susan Earl, who'd flown up from London and landed just after us, did the rental car formalities and after some trudging around in the snow trying to actually find the car were on our way.
By now it was dark but we were on highways so it didn't seem so bad. We had a GPS but unfortunately it was an older model and also seemed to have some guided tour stuck permanently on. We never could figure out how to turn it off and since we traversed the same roads several times we had to listen to the same narration over and over again until finally we muted it. The GPS could guide us to a supermarket which was lots of fun looking at all the different food and packaging. For a small country they do really well having nearly everything with Icelandic packaging. By now it was getting late and with an uncertain drive ahead of us we needed a quick meal. Luckily KFC is quite popular in Iceland it seems and there was one nearby. Funnily enough it wasn't quite the same as we remembered, perhaps they have their own twist.
We had instructuctions to find the house but no real *address* for the GPS so the challenge was to get to where the instructions began in Reykjavik. There was a bit of backtracking required - this capital city seemed quite large and modern for a country with fewer people than Christchurch! Eventually we were on our way, heading onto narrower and icier roads until eventually we came to the locked gate and the long driveway (fortunately freshly plowed!) which lead up to the house. It was a pleasure to find the house was already warm and had lights on for us. It was even more of a pleasure to see how lovely it looked and the view over the lake and into Thingvillier National Park when the sun came up the next day (official sunrise at 11:15 but it was light a bit before then). We were really ready for some icy adventures!
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