The night before I contacted the Airbnb host to ask if we could by chance check in earlier than the designated 12 pm check in time. She had indicated that the people before us had already checked out that day so we could. While we didn’t designate a time, we assumed if they had already checked out it would be ready upon arrival. We woke up, got ready and headed back into Rekjavick, arriving about 9:30 am to find no key in the specified box. We made our way to a bakery (where we shared a delicious pastry and breakfast sandwich) and I contacted the owner, she was surprised that we arrived “so early” and was sending her sister over to get the flat ready, and it should be ready by 11:30 am. Guess we see arriving early as two completely different things. We then walked around the town a bit, stopping in some souvenir shops (scoping out potential purchases), until it was time to check in. Thankfully it was Sunday and street parking was free as there was no private parking near the flat. 

After we were able to check in, we took the best showers ever and then took the car to fill it up with gas and vacuum it out prior to returning. Once we returned it, we got a ride back to the flat and then headed back out to do some more sightseeing, and shopping, by this time it was raining so we took every opportunity to duck in and out of places, we attempted to go to Rekjavick’s church up on the hill, Hallgrimskirkja, to find out they were having an organ concert, but would reopen back up at 6:15, Nick was not so impressed with the construction of the church as it was not completely concrete as it appears and was falling apart on the exterior.  They were currently doing construction on part of it so of course (as usual) there was scaffolding. However the organ inside was very impressive, one of the largest we have ever seen.

Hallgrimskirkja

Of course while we waited to get back into the church we visited our new favorite happy hour spot but buy one, get one beers, beers on average in Iceland are about $8.00, so we felt rich finding this deal.

That night we found a restaurant via Trip Advisor that seemed to have decent prices for Rekjavick and the menu looked good, so we headed over to Messinn based on its positive reviews. When we arrived it was packed, we were told it would be a 15 min wait, only to be turned away a few minutes later and asked to come back in 30 minutes. We obliged but I was concerned that we wouldn’t get a table since they didn’t take our name. However the good looked so delicious that we walked around and headed back after about 20 minutes to find a nice table in the corner with a reserve sign and as soon as we walked in row waist directed us to it. We shared a bottle of Italian Pino Grigio, some pretzel bar bites with chili mayo and for our entree we decided to share the Arctic Char, and thank goodness we did as the portion was huge, it came with four pieces of fish, potatoes and cherry tomatoes. Sharing a meal allowed us to get desert, a berry skyr mousse, Nick really enjoyed it. At the end of our meal we found out that they had only opened two months prior, and apparently has been made somewhat popular by Rain Wilson from The Office visiting and writing about it. 

Tomorrow was the big final day and we had some fun things planned so back to flat we went to get what we hoped was our first night of good sleep, well sleep that was not in the back of a car.