Goodbye Iceland, Hello Canada.

We took time to relax yesterday morning, something we haven't done for the last five days. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Iceland, but because we were only there for five days we kept going all the time to see as much as we could in that short period of time. So we had no firm plans yesterday, other than our flight to Canada which was scheduled to leave at 6:40pm last night.

We checked out of the CenterHotel Thingholt at noon. We'll tell you more about this hotel in another post, but lets just say it was a pretty cool hotel! We totally enjoyed our visit with them. They held our bags for us because our bus to the airport wasn't picking us up until 2:30pm, so we took the time for one last walk around Reykjavik and a stop for an Icelandic lunch.

Kevin and Ruth at the Sun Voyager sculpture.

At the sculpture, we met a nice young couple from Chicago who were on their honeymoon. We took each other's photos and had a nice chat about what to see in Iceland. They had only just arrived, and we were just leaving! Hope you enjoy your stay guys!

Looking back towards downtown Reykjavik.

And looking in the opposite direction. There is a nice walking and cycling path along the waterfront.

We walked some more, and then headed back to the central area for lunch. We wanted to have full stomachs because we wouldn't get food on the airplane although we had bought some snacks for the flight. We went back to Momma Steina Icelandic Food Station because we were so happy with our meal from there the first night we had arrived in Reykjavik. Great local food and at a reasonable price!

Great local food at Momma Steina's.

And then we went back to the hotel and waited for the FlyBus Plus shuttle to bring us to the airport. We knew we would arrive at the airport early, but by this point the weather was turning sour and it was raining. While we had had some showers during our five days in Iceland, it never really poured with rain until now. So we were really lucky with the weather! 

Made it to the airport and changed our last bit of Icelandic koronas into Canadian dollars. Spent the leftover pocketful of change on an expensive yogurt, and donated the balance to charity.

And then waited around people watching. Our flight was full, and I don't think they allowed sufficient time to board and take off on time. Either that, or the people on this flight were abnormally slow. It sure seemed that way because even when we were on the plane making our way to our seats, people seemed to take forever getting their carry on things into the overhead bins and actually sitting down. I watched one guy take about two minutes to get himself settled to the point where everyone else could make their way by him. And then there was this other woman who had gone too far for whatever reason and was trying to make her way back up to her assigned seat. Of course others couldn't get by her and I suggested she go all the way back to the end so that others could get through. I honestly don't know what people are thinking sometimes. Apparently they are not thinking!

Anyhow we were 15 or 20 minutes late leaving, and then we had a strong headwind and a very turbulent flight. The turbulence doesn't bother me, but I noticed from the monitor that our flight speed was down to 385 mph at one point where it is normally over 500 mph. All of this meant that we were over an hour late landing. Our daughter Lindsey was there waiting for us, and then we had an hour drive back to their place. By the time we got to bed it was 2:30am our time (11:30pm local time).

And so we are in Nova Scotia!