Clearing customs was a breeze and then we boarded one bus to go from the gate to the baggage claim area and, once re-united with our stuff, boarded another bus for the trip to the Reykjavik bus station and a switch to a mini-bus for the final trek into town and our hotel.
The area between Keflavik airport and the bus terminal is quite barren, a lava field dusted with early morning frost (the temperature was -2, a small change from the 26 degrees in Toronto on Sunday). Homes dotted the fields. If there was a master plan, it wasn't immediately apparent -- homes looked they like had been dropped from the sky at random. The following image will give you a small idea of the terrain. It was taken on our trip out to the airport on the 19th:
As we crossed the city limits, the traffic increased dramatically. For all the Ontario politicians who complain about the "war on the car", they haven't seen a Reykjavik rush hour. Streets in the core are all mostly one-way and barely wider than a car-width.
We arrived at our hotel/apartment (the Room with a View) about 8:30, checked in and immediately crashed (we'd been up since early Sunday morning without a break). The day started for real about 4 pm.
The hotel was in the 101 Reykjavik area of town (i.e. the 101 postal code) on a street called Laugavegur. Laugavegur is full of restaurants and cafes, as well as several jewellery and clothing stores and a selection of touristy places, both at the low and high end of the economic scale. The street looks like this:
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