Surprisingly we managed to fit everything in our bags ready for the flight to Iceland! Thank goodness we paid for Tim to upgrade from carry on baggage to check in baggage so he could bring some stuff back to England for us!

We then felt like real backpackers, lugging all our stuff by foot to the Utrecht train station and then on the train to Schiphol airport - no luxury of a car this time!

We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare and lucky we did as the airport was really busy with Easter just around the corner so the queues were quite long!

We used up our last euros with an airport lunch - no KFC for Calvin this time though!

The flight was a bit delayed leaving and then the journey was pretty smooth and uneventful.

When we arrived at Keflavik airport, we had to wait for a shuttle bus to take us to the car rental place (these were the instructions on the car rental confirmation email). We waited in a queue of people for quite a while in the cold, windy weather! The bus finally came and literally drove us 200 metres to the car rental place - definitely would have been quicker and warmer to walk!

We picked up our little Kia Picanto (amongst all the 4wds that other people were collecting). Thankfully we were used to driving on the right so that was easy enough. The studded tyres sounded unusual though!

We drove the 45 mins to our accommodation, located a little outside of Reykjavik. The landscape was very barren with mountains in the distance. After we checked in we then drove the 15 minutes into Reykjavik and even managed to find free street parking.

We saw the very impressive Hallgrimskirkja church from a distance and then wandered to the 'cheap' pizzeria that we found on TripAdvisor. Problem was - it was closed! Before making a plan B we went to the tourist office to investigate some activities for the next few days. Then we went looking for other cheap places but they were all closed (Good Friday tomorrow) so we thought subway might be a cheapish option. Not to be! $17 for a foot long sub! But it was getting late and we were hungry so we got it anyway!

Then we went back to the tourist office to book in some of the activities. By this point we realised the shops might be closing and it was a public holiday tomorrow and we had no food! It was 8:30 but still light outside so we lost track of the time! So we drove to the supermarket and got there 10 minutes before it closed so we managed to stock up on some supplies for the next few days!

We then decided to drive back into the city centre to take some photos of the church lit up. We were hoping to go inside too but it was closed. Calvin braved the cold, windy conditions to take photos while Kate hopped out of the car for a few seconds, acknowledged that she had seen the church at night and then retreated to the warm car!

It was then time to drive back to the house and go to sleep as we were shattered (especially as our body clocks were 2 hours ahead of the actual time but they were also confused as it had only got dark after 9pm)!