SPAIN 2026
In the early days of our travel bug diagnosis, we tried to travel somewhere we haven't been, once per year. Now that time allows, we try to travel somewhere new twice a year, once in the spring, and once in the fall. When the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals started coming out we had completely different plans to travel to Thailand/Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos, but once you clicked on the deals, decided you wanted to be seated, and bring some luggage, the flight deals were no longer deals. That's when IcelandAir popped up with great deals to multiple destinations in Europe, as long as you did a brief stop in Reykjavik, Iceland. Well, we had only seen the south coast of Spain and Seville, so a really good flight deal to Barcelona seemed like a great fit for our travel addiction.
One of the newer things airlines have been adding to their repertoire is paying/bidding to upgrade your seats. I like to make the minimum bid you can make for an upgrade offer from the airlines. Icelandair accepted my bid and we had nice business class seats including all the premium perks for our flight to Reykjavik.
Still didn’t sleep well, but we were taken care of, and were almost first off the plane for the long line at customs.
Saturday
We arrived early at Reykjavik, and go to get a taxi for the trip to our hotel, the driver points "that brown building is your hotel". Aurora Keflavik Airport hotel, a 5 minute walk away, let us pay a small fee to check-in early… and threw in a free breakfast.
Wanting to make the most of our 24 hour layover in Iceland, we took a bus from the airport to the BSI bus station in centre of town, then a smaller bus to Sky Lagoon. Before we could leave though, we had to change buses twice... first one was, as the driver told us "a piece of crap", the second one didn’t have the right keys, but we still arrived right on our scheduled time. I had booked us a day in the Sky Lagoon, on a nice sunny day.
After just enjoying some time in the warm waters of the lagoon, we then did The Ritual. The Sky Lagoon ritual (officially called the Skjól Ritual) is a 7-step traditional Icelandic wellness journey designed to awaken your senses. It takes you through a sequence of hot and cold therapy, steam, and exfoliation, all while overlooking the dramatic North Atlantic Ocean near Reykjavik.
Our senses fully awakened, we headed back into the lagoon and had two really expensive drinks before taking several buses to get back to the airport, for our walk to the hotel.
We got back to our hotel just in time to have some dinner, then a quick nights sleep before heading back to the airport.
