The flight was on time and we reached Iceland at around 9:30 am. After a quick walk through immigration and a few minutes to pick up our bags, we were on our way to get the rental car. It was an annoying bus ride out to an off-airport location for pickup. The agent at the desk tried to scare us into buying the optional insurance but we didn’t budge. I had reserved a small SUV and they tried to give me a VW ID.5 EV. If we were not planning to go out in the wilderness of the ring road, it’d have been good to test out the VW EV. So, I declined that and we rented a Peugeot 3008 SUV. Per their suggestion, I took a video documenting some minor damage to the car before driving off.

As we started driving towards Reykjavik, we noticed a big plume of smoke towards the horizon. I knew about the volcano that was erupting on Reykjanes peninsula near Grindavik. I was hoping to drive there and try to see it but little did I know that it was not far from the road from the airport to Reykjavik. I took the next possible exit and started driving towards that plume of smoke. Many other people were doing the same thing. Reached a spot where a lot of cars were parked in a lot by the side of the road. We parked, got out, and followed the trail. It wasn’t a well-established trail but we could walk towards the volcano and be at a distance of about a km. Could clearly see the lava spewing out of the volcano cone. Couldn’t believe that it wasn’t even 2 hours since we landed in Iceland and we were seeing this real live volcano erupting. After taking in the awesomeness of the views, we got back to the car and drove to Reykjavik.

Even with the volcano detour, we reached our hotel before noon. Thankfully, our room was ready for check-in. We dropped off our bags, freshened up, and got out to get some lunch. Vaishali had already looked up some possible places. We decided on a highly recommended place called “Sea Baron” as it was not too far to walk. We had the langoustine soup and shared a grilled salmon skewer. The food was excellent just like the reviews said.

Our dinner reservation at Messinn was at 8:30 pm. We just decided to walk around downtown Reykjavik and visiting famous landmarks such as the famous church Hallgrimskirkja, the Harpa Performing Arts Center, Icelandic parliament, Townhall, and the shore walk with sculptures like “The Sun Voyager”.




This is the statue of Leif Eriksson who was the Viking who made the journey to America hundreds of years before Columbus.


It was cloudy and foggy but didn’t rain and wasn’t cold. So, walking around was quite enjoyable and made us hungry for the fish pan dinner at Messinn. We shared a smoked Arctic char appetizer and then had a cod fish pan that was made with a creamy spicy sauce that seemed to be flavored with garam masala.