Iceland Adventure: Days 7 & 8 (end of trip)

Friday 9/9: Rainy Day in Reykjavik

We were able to sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast again in our apartment, including some treats from Sweet Aurora bakery  next door that was just opened recently by a French pastry chef. Yum! We had planned to have a Happy Hour helicopter tour this afternoon, but the forecast for rain all day proved to be accurate, so the tour was cancelled. Better that than to do the tour and not have a good view!!! The cancellation freed up our schedule a bit, and we headed out in the late morning to the Culture House, which is part of the National Gallery of Iceland and features select works by Icelandic artists.

Our next stop was an immersive digital video experience Circuleight at Harpa. There were only three other people who entered the exhibit when we did, so we had lots of space to spread out and enjoy how the digital images interacted with our movements. The purple spore-like images were particularly striking. 

Then we finished up a bit more shopping and dropped stop off at our apartment before going for afternoon tea to Apotek, a very highly rated and well-known restaurant in Old Reykjavik. We finished off our tea experience with two specialty cocktails -- a Black Death Negroni for me, made with Brennivin (whose nickname is "Black Death"), and a Dilligan for Evan, made with Icelandic gin infused with dill. Both were delicious and certainly unique!

For our final evening, we had drinks at Mr. E's favorite local bar, Kaffibarinn, which we also later discovered in the Best of Reykjavik list in several categories. We returned to Krua Thai for takeout again and finished up the evening with packing and getting ready for our departure in the morning. Our roller board bags were very, very full!!!

Saturday 9/10: KEF > ORD > SMF

We got upgraded again to Polaris Business class for the flight from Reykjavik to Chicago, so we could enjoy the Icelandair Saga Lounge at the airport prior to departure. We also had a fast track lane for security but encountered a weird additional and slow security check at the gate itself. Once we were on board, we tried to switch seats to be together rather than in separate window pods but didn't have luck this time around. My seatmate was a very friendly woman from the Chicago area who had just done a tour of Greenland with some friends, and I enjoyed hearing about her experiences. Mr. E got some great aerial photos of Greenland from his side of the plane during the journey but didn't have as personable a seatmate.

 

Our transfer experience in Chicago was excruciatingly slow, primarily due to the renovations underway at the international terminal. We waited for more than an hour just to get through passport control, and there was no separation between citizens and visitors, which seemed very strange and made the process much more lengthy. We had to repack our bags to fit the two bottles of Duty Free Icelandic alcohol (Brennivin and gin) that we had purchased at Keflavik, and we still managed to have about 20 minutes in the Polaris lounge because our connecting flight was delayed by nearly an hour. We arrived in Sac about 45 minutes later than anticipated and were home by about 8:15pm, just enough time to unpack some necessary items, snuggle with Calypso, and go to bed.

Such a great trip!!! We definitely want to go back to do more in Reykjavik itself and also to see other parts of this fascinating country.