Day 25 - Reykjavik to London

The Catholic Church

My last day in an all too brief stay in Iceland. After a hostel breakfast I went for a walk that first took me past the old Catholic Church up on the hill in West Reykjavik. I continued west, passing many more examples of Reykjavik’s driftwood and corrugated iron architecture, until I reached the waterfront and then followed that right around to and through the old harbor area and back to the hostel. There were views right across to Akranes, though the mountain tops where obscured by cloud.


After completing my hostel checkout I walked up to the Reykjavik Indoor Thermal Swimming Pool near the cathedral. The spa pool was flagged as being 37 degrees and the still pool a few degrees warmer at 42 degrees. Sitting in each was very relaxing. I tried the swimming pool briefly but it was quickly evident that my shoulder was still not quite ready for any serious sort of swimming strokes.

I stopped for lunch and a coffee (did I ever mention that bananas are only about 50 cents each even in Iceland) on the way back to the hostel for my 1:00pm appointment with an airport bus. I was starting to get a little concerned when the pickup didn’t arrive until 1:20pm, but nevertheless I made it to Keflavik International Airport with about 1:45h before my flight. For the first time during my stay in Iceland we started to get some consistent rain falling as we left the city – good timing.

It seems to be a curious thing about flight scheduling from Keflavik. Last Tuesday my flight seemed to be one of a number that arrived in the early morning. Today when I arrived a bit after 2:00pm, my 4:10pm flight was due to be one of the next two departures, with about another 10 departures to then follow by 5:00pm. I think the airport must be like a ghost town between about 10:30am and 1:30pm. After check-in, which took a while because of all the flights schedule to leave so close together, I treated myself to another coffee to use up exactly my remaining Icelandic Krona. Not often it works out that well!

Icelandair spruiks their services

The boarding processed seemed to take an unusually long time so we were nearly 10 minutes late pulling away from the terminal. Not that it mattered because we still had to fly a couple of loops in a holding pattern just north of London anyway because of congestion at Heathrow. As a result we arrived at 8:01pm, when it looked like we’d be in as early as 7:45pm at one stage. At least we made right hand turns, so from my right side window seat I was able to take in some pleasant views of the irregular field pattern of the English countryside in the late afternoon light. It was also kind on interesting to follow our convoluted progress on the real-time flight map on the screen in front of me.

You know that Heathrow is a big airport when you are disembarking at gate #101. And it’s a brisk 10 minute walk to the Arrival’s Hall. And yet despite having to wait nearly 10 minutes for my luggage to appear on the carousel, it was still only 40 minutes from the time the plane pulled up until I was standing on the Heathrow tube platform waiting for the Piccadilly line train into the city. So for me at least it all seemed to work pretty smoothly. However there was a slight hiccup on the tube when I failed to grasp the significance of an announcement about partial closure of the Northern line, to which I needed to transfer to make it to my cousin Janelle’s house. However, it only meant backtracking four stops and I was still in familiar territory at 12 Morella Road shortly after 10:00pm. It was good to see Janelle and Chris again, and Bob the dog soon remembered me and wanted to play fetch the ball. There was just time for a cuppa and a chat before retiring for the night.