Sleep Deprived in Reykjavik

We landed in Keflavik International Airport at 4:35 am. I had not slept on the plane. Dragging through a bog of exhaustion, we found our way to Joe and the Juice. We drank our shake/juice, and then we made our way down to the baggage claim.

A note on Joe and The Juice: it is a chain, there are two spots at the airport and at least two in Reykjavik. The name, it isn't a good one, refers to the fact that they have both a juicing machine and a coffee machine. The name, and the exact type of terrible that it is, is a good representation of the names of shops we found in Reykjavik. Names are: idontspeakicelandic (tourist shop) bad taste (music shop) farmers and friends (like words with friends! but not a cross-word puzzle game, an expensive clothing store!)

Many tourists are from the US, UK or Canada, insuring a lot of English is spoken around you - and leading to most signs and all tourism workers speaking at least some English. We were lucky: we were earlier in the season and the weather wasn't always great, so we managed to avoid some of the tourist hoards. But they certainly exist, and I think the weirdly English-named shops are a good indication of that. From the USA, more tourists come than there are native Icelanders; and we are hardly the only ones. 

Matt sarcastically approved me putting up this photo if I labeled it as sarcasm. Joe as famous sculpture.

We walked down and looked and looked and did not find our baggage. We filled out forms and found out that the next incoming flight from Boston is not for another 24hrs. So we walked out of the airport with only our backpacks and picked up the 4wd rental (a silver Suzuki Vitara) and drove towards Bergsson Mathús to get breakfast. After this my mind started drifting off to sleep: we managed to climb to the top of Hallgrímskirkja (a contemporary-looking church) but after that I dozed off in the car. 

view from Hallgrímskirkja 

Once I woke up, we headed to the Kjarvalsstaðir art museum. Then we walked along the river, entered the Harpa music building and finally collapsed in our hotel room bed at Captainn Reykjavik (which considering we had found only a few hours previously, was quite nice) 

from inside Harpa music hall

We slept for three hours and went to Matwork for food.  We kept looking around and almost choosing places to eat because they were called Matthis and thisMat(t). Turns out Matur means food, not a shortened Matthew. I fell asleep, after a very long day, at 11:30 pm. Matt fell asleep at 1am, and it was still light out.