We landed in Keflavik (which the morning of the flight caused me slight internal consternation as to why we weren't going to "Reykjavik", but it all worked out), picked up the rental car, and did likely the most enjoyable thing post an over night flight: spend a few hours soaking in the geothermal heated Blue Lagoon. A free beverage and facial later and we began adopting the term that would lead us around Iceland and Ireland for the remainder of the trip: bop.
We bopped around Reykjavik gawking at the beer prices, running into the Hallgrimskirkja church and scoping out the organ, and getting posted up in our first AirBnB of the trip: Batman's Secret Hideaway. Adorned with newspaper clippings, world clocks, and Gotham City memorabilia, I've never felt so secure away from home.
After doing some quick bopping around the city for food and coffee in the morning, we hiked to Öxarárfoss in Þingvellir, getting our first taste for Icelandic waterfalls, aka "fosses". Small waterfalls quickly became known as "baby fosses" where for the larger ones we used their proper names. From there we made the first acquisition of the trip: a glorious viking helmet that will run rampant in the photos going forward. Gullfoss was the first proper foss to be in the present of the helmet, followed by a quick drive by of Seljalandsfoss (we would be stopping by to hike around the next day, but at this point we still couldn't resist the quick visit).
The appropriately named black sand beach was our next stop on the bop, and this ended up being a rather quick one as the temperature was dropping, the cold rain was coming down, and we didn't want to be the victim of a "sneaker wave". Making it out alive, we snuck into Vik for some lovely dinner, then retreated to the first of many adorable cabins.
