DAY 1, part 2: ICELAND!

Ahhhhh, we made it!

As I sat down in my plane seat on Iceland Air (23 rows in front of Hilary), I was just thankful that I didn’t throw up the sandwich I ate on the way to Boston. Hilary already gave my EWR–>BOS seat buddy, Jo, a shoutout yesterday but I just wanted to send another “thank you” out to her for the extra dramamine. Jo, if you ever see this blog (since I gave you the wrong web address for it…sorry!), please know I appreciated that chewable dramamine all the way to Reykjavik! Anyway, after a few hasty “We made it” texts, we were off for Iceland.

**SIDENOTE: I watched The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies on the plane. It was fine. I’m still mad they made three movies and that Lee Pace was Orlando Bloom’s dad but what are you going to do?!** 

We landed in Kevlavik, Iceland around midnight to a beautiful sunset. Yes, the sun set at midnight. We stopped at an airport store to grab a celebratory tiny bottle of wine before heading outside to find our shuttle to the hostel. We boarded the shuttle and shared an orange on our 50 minute ride to Reykjavik.

It was still light out when we arrived at Hlemmur Square Hostel to check in at 1:15am. We made our way up to our room, which we shared with 11 other people, and managed not to trip in the dark as we found the two empty top bunks. Quickly realizing neither of us were tired enough to sleep, we thought we’d go check out the lounge.

A Panoramic of our Street: Hostel down on Left…. Penis Museum on Right.

We headed toward the lounge and this guy was just hanging out in the stairwell. That sounds really shady but this guy was super welcoming.  Enter: Lad. Lad is our first #eurofriend (see: hilandjess instagram) and he is an amazing world traveller. We sat with him for a while chatting until a girl named Araba walked out of the elevator with her 47 bags and we asked her to join the stairwell party. Araba was a little hesitant about joining our stairwell shindig but accepted our offer after she went into her room and heard the man with night terrors that would be her bunkmate. Thus, our 2nd official #eurofriend took a seat on the stairs.

After a bit more conversation, we finally crashed around 3:30am and went to sleep up on our top bunks… daylight still shining through the curtains.

Some subtle wall decor

I’m sorry that was so boring; day 1 was an exhausting day!
–Jess 🙂