Iceland - From Airport to Akureyri

Iceland is a beautiful country and the views in the town (or city, it's Iceland's second biggest city with a population on 17,500) are spectacular. Mountain tops are everywhere and you can also see the sea.



The way I got here was amusing as well. Instead of doing the normal touristy thing of changing some money at the airport and getting a bus or taxi to the capital, Reykjavik, I decided to hitch hike directly from the airport. Hitch hiking is so much better than using public transportation as you get to have interesting conversation and your plans can easily change. The only down side of it is if you get stranded or if you're in a rush to reach somewhere at a specific time. My initial plan was to sleep a night or two in the capital and then continue to visit my friend in Akureyri. So I took the trolley with my bags on it and walked about 50m to a junction where the helpful tourist info told me I'd have good chances.



It took about 10 minutes for a nice couple on their honey moon to pick me up. When I learnt that they go about halfway from Reykjavik to Akureyri (these are about 5 hours apart), I decided to continue and put my faith in fate. A short stop over on the way enabled me to buy a SIM card and call my friend who was happy I'm coming sooner than expected.



It's quite easy to hitch hike around Iceland as there's one "highway" which goes all around the island. It actually has only a single lane to each direction and you can try to stop cars almost everywhere. The next ride took about 20 minutes to get. Two Icelandic brothers kept me company for the next hours. It was actually the first time they picked up a hitch hiker.

While talking about different subjects, including the famous economic crisis, I learnt to count to ten in Icelandic. Yes, seems I gotta learn that in every language I encounter. An aspiring polyglot perhaps.

Icelandic language has consonants which were not trivial for me to produce. Furthermore, as it's so different from other languages I know, it wasn't easy to remember what I was told. Remembering many people's names here isn't trivial either.

Let me finish this post with two more pictures: one of me reenacting my tries to hitch hike while holding cardboard signs made for me by the guy at the airport's tourist info and the other of a nice view from the way.



I hope you liked this post. Show me the love by writing a comment here, ok? Yes, it's been too long since I actually updated the blog. There's a delicate balance between actually taking the time to enjoy everything and writing about it so although I was trying to get to it, I didn't till now.

Recently, however, I managed to create 3 blog posts on Frognector's journey so you're welcome to read about Frognector and the old meteorite. The two other posts about Frognector (still from London) will be released today and two days later.