While on the plane, I woke up with an hour of flight time left. Tam had been up and he recommended I watch the inflight entertainment. Particularly the Icelandic safety driving video. Icelandair has a good combination of informational videos and entertainment media. Though I assure you, this was probably one of the most entertaining of all.

Airport Preparations

When we finally landed in Keflavík, it was around 6am and 30 Fahrenheit outside. Although many of the shops and restaurants were closed when we landed, we got a great feel for how well kept this airport is. We passed the DFS, and picked up some snacks and a SIM card. Most of our research said that alcohol is expensive outside of DFS, and we should pick up snacks since it's also a little cheaper too.

Here, we picked up a NOVA sim card. We paid about $35 for 10GB of data. Keep in mind that these don't come with SIM pins to eject the tray... So you're gonna have to get one or be creative. We also picked up some candy, nuts, and beer since we knew we had a long drive ahead of us.

Oh, and just so you know, Icelandic customs and immigration was an incredibly easy and pleasant experience.

Rental Car

We waited for the shuttle to bring us to the rental place. We would learn later is that the terminals are a 5 minute walk away from the rental car places. Keflavík is a small airport, and was created during WWII, hence its distance from the city. Honestly, I didn't mind the wait, the shuttles were warm and I was freezing!

We went with Thrifty.is for our rental car and opted for a 4x4/4WD SUV. 4WDs are often recommended because of the combination of gravel, snow, and wetness you might encounter while driving in Iceland. Driving conditions can vary. Rental companies here require that you have some kind of insurance, be it theirs or someone else. Credit cards sometimes offer this as a perk, so you might want to check the benefits on your card of choice. Tam has the Chase Sapphire Reserve, so everything would be covered as long as he denied any other coverage. So he did that. Also, if you know how to drive manual, use that to your advantage. They tend to be cheaper than automatic cars.

Sunrise to Reykjavik

Driving in was relatively easy, most of the roads in and around Reykjavik are 4 lanes at most. They also drive on the same side as the US, so you don't have to do anything super special. The drive in was beautiful, as the sun was only beginning to rise.

Phone Activations

We got into Reykjavik and were trying to figure out where to get a SIM pin. We pulled into a parking lot and didn't see very many shops open, but I chanced it and went into a building. It had a bulletin board with thumbtacks, so I borrowed one for the purposes of ejecting our SIM trays.

To activate the SIM cards, you need to connect to internet initially. We headed over to a grocery store that happened to have a coffee and pastry shop. We grabbed a small breakfast and finally activated the SIMs in each of our phones.

Annoyingly, iMessage does this weird thing where it creates new threads for contacts who you added a new number to. I ended up deleting a thread with Tam in it, and inadvertently created a new one with my family.

NOVA does have an app to add data should you need it. 10 GB is a lot, and even with constant streaming and other things, I only used about 4GB by the end of our stay.

Snacks!

We figured we should buy some snacks since we had a 6.5 hour drive ahead of us. We picked up some ramen, chips, cereal, and these lavosh like cookies with granola on it. The last one is mostly for me, Tam doesn't like dried fruit.

Eating out everyday in Iceland can get expensive, as meals can average $20-$30 per person for lunch, and higher for dinner. We figured we might have some meals at our Airbnb and snacks for in between.

The Drive

Just so we're clear, we were very lucky that it wasn't snowing this day. This is the route we had to take.

Hvalfjörður

I'd just like to point out that our first area of interest was driving under a fjord. Tam didn't believe me when I said it, but to be fair he wasn't looking at the map.

The cool thing about Iceland's tunnels is that they make the sides of the tunnels look very natural and rock like. Also the temperature drops a ton, and you can feel the cold seeping into the car.

While driving through the tunnel definitely cut down on our commute time, seems like we missed a bit by doing it. Though, considering our sleep deprivation, getting from Point A to Point B was a top priority.

The Drive

As you can see from the pictures below, the drive was rather empty. We were rarely accompanied by other drivers, but the scenery changed depending on where we were at. We also stopped at a gas station in the literal middle of nowhere. So in the middle of nowhere that we saw a guy ride by, full speed, on his horse... With his dog happily following behind.

Akureyri

I was starting to lose steam by the time we got to Akureyri, slowly dozing off at 2pm. Though, I had to stay up because Tam was driving and needed someone to talk to.

When we got to Akureyri, I couldn't help but think, THANK GOD. We stopped by Bonus, a grocery store, to buy things we could make for dinner and breakfast. Then headed to our AirBNB... Which, as I've said before, is gorgeous.

En Route to Airbnb

Airbnb Living Room

Airbnb Kitchen

After bringing all our stuff in from the car, we showered, and knocked out until 4am the next day.