Arrival in Reykjavik

See! Like I promised, here are more pictures.

I left Lisbon after two extremely hot days. I had my warmest clothes all wrapped up in a vacuum bag, and the night before leaving Lisbon I got them out and wore some of them on the plane. My flight out of Lisbon was at 7:40 in the morning. After a rush through security and customs and all that, I got to the flight with plenty of time. The plane I was on was extremely nice, with drinks served and what have you, and here's how crowded it was:

I had an entire row to myself! 

Here are my last pictures of mainland Europe:

My first plane went to Gatwick airport, where I was going to meet a flight from IcelandAir, so here's the plane coming into England:

 When I went to the gate for my plane to Iceland, I remember thinking how excited I was. On the plane's ceiling, they played the northern lights!

Here we are leaving England:

It got very foggy very quickly, but I saw a rainbow in the clouds:

And then I got my first glimpse of Iceland:

I think now is a good time to mention that I had spent the majority of the past five months in city centers. The Y in Dublin was in Dublin 2, which is about as downtown as downtown gets. Portsmouth, Munich, Barcelona, and Lisbon had all been downtown hotels and hostels. Glendalough and Connemara had been so cool for me, partly because they were quiet. I was used to loud crowds, buses, traffic, you name it. So when I looked out that window at the white stuff on the shore, I thought those had to be buildings.

Here it is a little closer:

Nothing. There.

I'm not going to lie, the first time I saw that, my heart did a little bit of a happy dance. Not a huge, oh-this-so-much-better-than-anything-else happy dance, but a tiny little bit of satisfaction. Besides, isn't it beautiful? My parents had been telling me that Iceland all looks the same, and when I was looking out that window, I thought to myself that that wouldn't be such a bad thing!

Anyway, the airport is in Keflavik, which is about a half hour drive from Reykjavik itself, but they sell tickets for transportation on the plane. I thought that was odd, but what I found even stranger was that they gave you plane-to-door service for something roughly equivalent to $20, as I recall. I thought that was really odd, especially since I was staying in a hostel and not a hotel, but they said they could drop me off.

Here's a picture from the window:

And here, my dear readers, is the view from literally right outside my hostel:

I mean, wow. Wow. Wow. 

This was from a little farther down the road:

Is it worth mentioning that these pictures were, I think, taken at about eight in the evening?

Anyway, I went wandering around Reykjavik to see what I could see. And, you know something? Reykjavik is not big. I honestly think that you could walk to almost any part of Reykjavik from any other part. 

While on my wanderings, looking for a warm coat (because the stuff I had had during winter in Italy and Iceland was NOT very warm), I found a store that reminded me of our REI. And this was in it:

Many, many, many more pictures to follow.