KEF to FCO

We left Hotel Budir at checkout and headed back to Stykkisholmur to pick up our birth certificates from the commissioner’s office.

We had lunch at Nesbraud in Stykkisholmur, which seemed to be a local spot and felt a little off-limits to me. The guy behind the counter did speak English to me, but looked thoroughly put off to do so. Anyhow, I had the mushroom soup, Peter had a sandwich, and we shared a cinnamon roll that was bigger than my face.

With plenty of time to kill before our midnight flight, we drove back to Reykjavík to visit Perlan, which we had considered for dinner previously but ran out of time.

The planetarium show is what caught my eye, and we made it just 5 minutes before the next showtime, so we bought tickets only for that. Those tickets gave us access to the planetarium, the downstairs volcano/water exhibit, and the upstairs 360 balcony.

After seeing all three spaces, I would have preferred to get the Wonders of Iceland tickets. From what we could see of those exhibits, it seemed right up our alley, but we didn’t have enough time to go through the whole thing.

We walked through their gift shop and I almost bought a sweater. Fortunately, I looked at the inner care tag first: designed in Iceland, made in Asia. They made my life very easy, as that will always be an obvious “pass” for me, especially for a souvenir.

After Perlan, and an unsuccessful trip to the bank to pay our parking tickets, we spent the evening at the Blue Lagoon.

At the airport, we dropped off our rental car and waited for the shuttle to the terminal. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, the woman who accepted our car return drove us to the airport departure area, and said sometimes the shuttle stops coming if it’s later at night (8:30pm).

We waited another hour to check in our baggage. This time, we had moved all our cold weather clothes into the biggest suitcase, which we would leave at the FCO airport, and all of our warm weather overflow into the smaller checked bag.

Usually, we travel with just a 30L backpack each, but because of the wedding and multiple climates, we had a lot more to deal with. The wait in line to check in reaffirmed to me that backpacks are the way to go 😝

KEF has a decent amount of shops and restaurants given the size (it’s a pretty tiny airport). If you’re on a late flight like we were, I suggest grabbing a bite before you go through the security check, as most of the made-to-order restaurants in the terminal were already closed for the night.

When we finally got to FCO (short layover in Frankfurt), we somehow walked out of a different terminal and had to ask at 3 different information desks about collecting our luggage.

We walked out of terminal one, but our bags were in terminal 3, behind the security clearance. I guess this happens often because they had a guard on the public side, ready to re-scan us and our carry ons so we could get back into the luggage carousel.

Peter went in to get the bags and I stayed on the public side with our backpacks. He had to sign a form, but otherwise it was an easy metal detector to get through to the secure side.

Checked luggage in hand, I stopped at our fourth info desk to ask about the left luggage facility, which thank goodness was also in terminal 3.

They scanned my passport, and we left our biggest bag at FCO for pickup on our way back home. They did give me a paper receipt, but I expect they could also give your bag back with only your passport to identify it.

It was a pretty hectic hour at the airport trying to get and then leave our bags, but overall, a very smooth and manageable trip.

Love,

PD