We’ve been in Iceland now for about 6 hours, and we are not going to see full darkness again until we get to London in 10 days time.
The great thing is that the place doesn’t remind me of anywhere – how good is that? Driving out of the airport and heading east and then south-east to Hella for our first ‘night’, my best description would be what I anticipate the moon would look like if lightly grassed and populated.
Our first impressions are that this is going to be pretty good! We actually skipped the Day 1 itinerary due to the time taken to get into the country (not much) and to acquire the hire car (a lot). In the end though we have personalised maps, GPS, a local phone and generally a whole heap of stuff to think about seeing and doing – way more than we can possibly fit in.
We were a bit worried about fitting the five of us plus luggage into a car for a week – but the car is brand new and fits people and luggage with ease, and it looks like it will be perfect. Justine did the first stint of driving on the right – something she’s pretty adept at – and hopefully I’ll pick up the hang of it again soon enough!
We also weren’t quite sure what to expect from the “comfort” standard accommodation, but if tonight is anything to go by we won’t be too badly off. The Stracta Hotel is very comfortable, clean and feels new. The architectural style is pretty basic, but the insides are very tidy and well-appointed, and the food in the restaurant was pricey, but tastier and not quite as extortionate as we’d been led to expect.
We didn’t eat until 8.30, after we’d had a chance to kick the footy to unwind and stretch out the muscles. When you think about it, a three and a bit hour drive through continuous rain from Grantown-on-Spey to Glasgow, followed be a similar length plane flight and then a couple of hours drive to the hotel is a pretty long day.
Luckily, our apartment has a private outdoor hot bath, and so Aidan, Lauren and I raced back from dinner to partake. It’s a pretty fair way to end a long day by lying back in the 38 degree water with the ambient temp a more mild 7 degrees, watching biplanes loop around from the nearby airfield disgorging parachutists. It’s now well after 11pm, and I can still hear them flying around out there now! This is gonna be GOOD!!
Everything in one place 