A Familiar Place
We returned to Reykjavik to the Center Hotel Plaza, the same place we stayed in February 2022 when we were unable to leave the city because of the blizzard. We quickly visited Hressingarkskalinn, our favorite restaurant in 2022, to make dinner reservations for the next day. We marveled at how warm the city is compared not only to winter 2022 but even compared to this past week. We are finally warm!
The Laundromat is a restaurant upstairs and a laundromat downstairs. Our hotel told us it would be about $75.00 to wash a load of clothes we decided to pay this place a visit. We loved the decorations upstairs of framed laundromats around the world but we still were shocked to discover that 2 loads of do it yourself laundry downstairs still cost us $52.00.
We met our friends, Matt and Cindy and dined at Mat Bar where we had a variety of authentic Icelandic small plates. We returned to the hotel where we people-watched in the lobby as we worked on the blog and did further planning for Phase 2 of our trip.
The Sky Lagoon was the big event of the following day! What a great place! We found it more enjoyable even than the iconic Blue Lagoon. We arrived early when there was no crowd and felt like we had the place to ourselves. We met a young man there wearing a Braves hat who has left his home in Woodstock to live in Iceland with his Polish wife. It is always refreshing to meet someone from home.
BBP (Berjarins bertu pylsur), the famous hotdog stand is still going strong. It reminds me of the Varsity in Atlanta. The line moves quickly and the dogs are warm and tasty. The traditional lamb dogs are topped with fresh onions, fried onions, mustard, and a mayonnaise based spread.
We spent several hours again in the hotel lobby catching up on news back home before heading out with Matt and Cindy to Hressaingarksklinn. The arctic char, the lamb, and the plokkfiskur did not disappoint. The local homemade 7 layer cake did not disappoint either.
We are now making our way to the cruise port to begin Phase 2 of our journey. We will visit four ports here in Iceland, then move to Norway to explore the northern ports of Norway We are most excited about Longyearbyen, the most Northern inhabited island in the world!
So, on this 10th day of our trip, we have enjoyed much of Iceland and traveled a total of 1,041 miles in our camper van.
