7 Days in Iceland: Day 1 – Blue Lagoon

Day 1

Today started off with our five and a half hour flight from Cleveland airport at 8:20p straight to Iceland via IcelandAir. It was a great, new, and clean airline with decent seats and movies. The only downfall is that it didn’t include an in-flight meal. We arrived around 6:30a (2:30a back home).

We were met at Keflavik airport by our car rental company, Lava Auto, where we picked up our silver Toyota Land Cruiser. We pack our luggage in and drive 20-minutes south to The Blue Lagoon. We are early for our scheduled Lagoon time of 11:00a, so we stop at The Northern Lights Inn for a breakfast buffet of assorted lunch meats, cheeses and pastries.

After a fulfilling breakfast, we drive around the corner just in time for The Blue Lagoon. The weather today was just absolutely perfect, with temperatures in the 50s and a crisp blue sky.

We snapped some pictures outside the building before entering. The lagoon wasn’t crowded yet, and we spent 3-hours lazily exploring the lagoon, trying out the free silica face masks and each of us trying a drink from the swim up bar – Somerby, Gull, strawberry sparkling wine and blue slushies.

After the Blue Lagoon, we drive 45-minutes north to our first Air BnB. Our host, Hjörtur, showed us around our beautiful, modern apartment in a suburb just outside downtown Reykjavík. Its got huge Icelandic and modern canvases and pieces of art all throughout the apartment, along with unique pieces of furniture (see the ‘cow’ lounge chair?)

We took a 3-hour nap as we were all extremely jet lagged, but woke up feeling rested and refreshed, and ready to zip down the street to the Bonus grocery store. Here, we picked up some breakfast items, a quick dinner for the evening and snacks for the car. It was a bizarre little store, comparable to an Aldis, but only bright yellow branding and a drunk pig as its mascot. The varieties were few there but what they did have was not only affordable, but in reasonable sizes as well. We spend about $105 on groceries and made our way back to the Air BnB.