It was 22:30 in London. I was making my way to a train that would take me to Stanstead Airport. From there, RyanAir would get me to Berlin by 9am the following day.
A full day of walking around Berlin, feeling sleep deprived and a 3 and a half hour flight later, we touched down in Keflavik, Reykjavik’s international airport. It was 23:45 and I hadn’t slept for about 40 hours. We covered the 45 km to Reykjavik by bus, in what seemed a couple of minutes, as I slept most of the journey.
We reached our hotel in the end, and the receptionist greeted us with a friendly “You see, there’s this situation…”
“That sounds promising”, I thought to myself.
They had overbooked our room, as every respectable hotel does. Seriously. The only solution that they could come up with was to send us to another hotel in their network. A 4 star hotel right in the very center of Reykjavik, for the same amount that we had paid. Fine by us
Making our way to the Plaza Hotel on the cobble-stone streets of a cold Friday morning gave us the first opportunity to interact with some Icelandic people heading home after a night of hard drinking. We came across guys munching on their hotdogs (really popular snack in Iceland) and girls so drunk that they could barely stand. Interesting, but nonetheless helpful and friendly crowd. We followed their directions and we found our hotel in no time. A drunk girl even escorted us some of the way and acted as a guide, explaining us different things about the landmarks we were passing by.
First Night in Reykjavik
It was 22:30 in London. I was making my way to a train that would take me to Stanstead Airport. From there, RyanAir would get me to Berlin by 9am the following day.
A full day of walking around Berlin, feeling sleep deprived and a 3 and a half hour flight later, we touched down in Keflavik, Reykjavik’s international airport. It was 23:45 and I hadn’t slept for about 40 hours. We covered the 45 km to Reykjavik by bus, in what seemed a couple of minutes, as I slept most of the journey.
We reached our hotel in the end, and the receptionist greeted us with a friendly “You see, there’s this situation…”
“That sounds promising”, I thought to myself.
They had overbooked our room, as every respectable hotel does. Seriously. The only solution that they could come up with was to send us to another hotel in their network. A 4 star hotel right in the very center of Reykjavik, for the same amount that we had paid. Fine by us
Making our way to the Plaza Hotel on the cobble-stone streets of a cold Friday morning gave us the first opportunity to interact with some Icelandic people heading home after a night of hard drinking. We came across guys munching on their hotdogs (really popular snack in Iceland) and girls so drunk that they could barely stand. Interesting, but nonetheless helpful and friendly crowd. We followed their directions and we found our hotel in no time. A drunk girl even escorted us some of the way and acted as a guide, explaining us different things about the landmarks we were passing by.
Finally, some sleep.