Hoping for a good night's sleep in Reykjavik.

Update:

Well, we WERE hoping for a good night's sleep in Reykjavik but now we've been delayed and lost a whole day. We are now hope to land in Reykjavik on Thursday morning, Sept. 1. We will get our car and head north on the Ring Road. It will be a three hour drive to our first country guesthouse near Blonduos. 

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There is only one real city in this country, Reykjavik, so if we want to buy food and supplies for our Ring Road trip we will need to shop here. I understand there is a Costco. A town, Akureyri, is up north, but we won't be there for a few days as we travel clockwise around the Ring Road. 

The weather lately has been lows around 45 and highs around 55. I've been watching the forecast, and it seems to rain off and on most days and there is plenty of vigorous wind. 

Fred doesn't want to do the Blue Lagoon but I do. We don't have reservations yet. It is one of of the top 25 wonders of the world according to a few expert raters including National Geographic. On the downside, we've learned it is very touristy and overpriced ($70-100 a person). On the upside, it has silica which improves skin and I should go because I may not be back to Iceland again. Whatever happens, I'm hoping we will warmly partake of many geothermal pools and hot springs as we find them on our travels around the Ring Road. It is a big part of the culture.

Clever signs for geothermal pools look like these below. We'll keep our eyes peeled.

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The exchange rate between the American and Icelandic currency is favorable to us. With $1 dollar we can purchase about $1.25 worth of a krona.

I will be headed to Reykjavik Roasters, which I've heard is the best coffee house. This picture from their website looks so European. But why those tiny cups for the coffee?

Fred and I believe this will be a low-stress trip. New Zealand was the last place we road tripped abroad.There are real cities and busy streets and highway interchanges,  plus driving on the other side of the road. Fred was great behind the wheel, but it kept us on our toes which kept the tension up. We don't expect this trip to be like that it all. There is a well-marked, fully-paved highway to follow along the Ring Road. A two-lane road apparently has few places to take a wrong turn. Once we get to one of our overnight stops, there will be only a small settlement with a few buildings. Finding our guesthouse should be easy. Most nights we will have two twin beds in our room with a tiny bathroom. There is geothermal heat and to control the temperature in your room you just open the window a little bit. I love the simplicity. Of course, it remains to be seen if my preconceptions about the trip are true. That's one alluring aspect about travel. A second is anticipation, as I talked about earlier this year in my biking blog.

A few financial details: hotels and guesthouses are costing us about $200 per night, a little more in Reykjavik. A car rental is about $73 a day for a Toyota Rav 4, manual transmission. There are lots of manual transmissions for rent there. I'll let you know later how much coffee and meals cost, but I'm expecting expensive. We used Delta frequent flyer miles to get here. Wow, I just checked and gas prices will be around $9.00 a gallon. Yikes.