My plan for Iceland was to find a camping ground each night and sleep in the car, so before arriving I had only booked hotels for the last 2 nights in the country. I picked up rental car near the airport, and wondered where to go next. I decided to drive to Reykjavík, which was about an hour away. While driving, I had a moment where I thought, “Damn, I’m in Iceland!”. I felt the landscape looked alien: the ground next to the highway was volcanic rock, there were no big trees, and in the horizon there were huge rocky mountains. Even the air seemed different, maybe it was just the colour because of the partly cloudy, partly sunny day.
I made to it Reykjavík and Hallgrímskirkja the famous church, had lunch (it was actually 6:30 in the afternoon by this point), and walked around Reykjavík’s centre afterwards. It was an interesting city (if we can call it that): it was pretty empty and quiet, and there were many souvenir and winter clothing stores (which I found out was actually necessary, even in July!).
After that, I drove to a campsite in the suburbs, getting there around 9:30 in the evening (The amount of daylight at night was confusing me. At one point it was 23:30, and the sun came out of the clouds and shone brightly for sunset. It never got dark in July, I could’ve gone outside at 1 at night and read a book without using any lights). I parked my car on the grounds and prepared to sleep in it. At this point I realised, it’s not going to be comfortable in it. I put the rear seat down, and there were metal parts pushing against the back of the seat, through my sleeping back, against my lower back…