We landed at 6:30am Iceland time, which was 2:30am our time. None of us slept much on the flight, nor had we eaten, and we had 10 hours to kill before we could check in at our Airbnb. So of course, the first thing we did after we picked up our 4-wheel drive rental and mobile hotspot, and drove through the lunar landscape between the airport and Reykjavik, was to find pastries.

I chose our first Airbnb due to its proximity to a bakery, Brauð & Co, so after we located the house and a local Icelander helped us figure out how to pay for parking, we walked half a block to a place where we saw a line out the door. We got in it after seeing these beauties in the window. The raspberry and vanilla croissants were a family favorite, and we bought some every morning in Reykjavík.

We ate the pastries while we explored the area around the house, which was only about a block and a half from the iconic Hallgrímskirkja church in downtown Reykjavík.

After our pastries, we realized we hadn’t had a real meal in about 12 hours. After we saw the church and oohed and ahhed, we wanted coffee and to feel less homeless. We found another street to explore and we searched for a place for a proper breakfast. Most restaurants and shops we passed were closed. It was maybe only 8am, and time was meaningless to us. It could have been 2pm and we wouldn’t have known the difference, especially since the sun had already been up for nearly five hours by 8am.

When we saw a line out the door of another place, we got in it. We lucked into finding Sandholt, another bakery, but that also had tables, coffee, and meals beyond pastries. We spent a good hour there, savoring real food (our daughter said hers was the best omelette she’d ever had), coffee to wake us up, and the cozy morning atmosphere of sunlight pouring through the windows and happy people clinking cutlery and chatting over coffee.

Sated and caffeinated, we walked our extra food back to the car, then went the opposite direction from the church and down to the waterfront, which was only about 3 blocks away from the house.

We walked along the water and up through town to see what we could see, and to see if the Icelandic Phallocological Museum is what its name sounds like it is (it is).

We ended up in a little park with tulips and then had no brain power, creativity, or energy left to continue to explore on foot, but still had five hours and no place to go to rest. Plus we were getting drowsy from our big breakfast. So despite not really wanting to strap into transportation seats again after our overnight flight, we got in the car anyway and drove to Þingvellir, about an hour outside of Reykjavík, and where the Mid-Atlantic rift bisects Iceland. At Þingvellir, the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet and are visible in two walls of rock that separate by about 2.5 cm per year as the plates move apart. My photos aren’t great; the light was bright and I didn’t have the mental capacity to do much more than snapshots, so mostly these are just for memories’ sake. The park was also crowded. This would be a great place to go early in the morning or late at night when fewer people are there and the light is softer.

We piled back into the car about 2pm, hoping that our Airbnb host would message us and say we could check in early. We heard from them just as we pulled into a parking spot on the street at 3pm: “The cleaners are done and the house is ready, you can check in now :).”

Our son fell asleep almost instantly; he slept for 8 hours, then woke in the middle of the night for 4, then slept again for another 8. I went to the market and bought some basics, my husband made pasta, and then our daughter was out too. He and I walked up the street to Snaps Bistro for fancy gin & tonics, and we managed to make it until 10pm, when it was still bright out and the sun was still an hour from setting, before we finally succumbed to sleep.