Last week I had two events to attend in Reykjavík so I stayed in the southern region for the whole week. I traveled from Akureyri with my coworkers by a bus arranged by the company we work for. Every year the company throws an annual ball in Reykjavík so we usually travel from Akureyri to celebrate with all the other employees placed in Reykjavík. We stayed at Kex Hostel like the years before, where we usually have a very pleasant stay. The place hardly changes. There is always the same friendly and relaxing environment, but I was very happy the bunk beds we slept in now weren’t as squeaky as last year.
There was some very loud construction work going on outside that started very early in the morning. The noise from the workers was pretty loud and annoying, but the staff warned us and from the note they gave us they were very sorry for the inconvenience.
View from our floor at Kex Hostel
We had an amazing time together, like you can probably guess from the group photo. The food was good, music played till midnight and my favourite Icelandic comedian Ari Eldjárn had a short performance, which I thought was the highlight of the evening. But the best thing was to spend time with all the amazing people I work with.
Before heading back to Akureyri we got lunch at Shake & Pizza, Egilshöll, which is owned by the same founders that started Hamborgarafabrikkan. We always get a very generous pizza buffet, so we’ve tried almost all the pizzas on the menu. They have various options of both pizzas and milkshakes so it is perfect for groups, especially if you want to play one round of bowing while there. Egilshöll is a little far from the downtown so it would be an ideal opportunity to play one round of bowling while at it, or even just go to the cinema.
After the meal it was time to head back to Akureyri, but because I had another event to attend later this week I decided to stay and visit my parents for a couple of days. It takes little more than an hour to get to my parents from Reykjavík so It was very handy that my brother had their car so I could drive back there myself.
The weather was very good the whole time I stayed with my family and although it was a short stay I got to meet a lot of my friends and family members.
After two days relaxing in the countryside I packed my bags and got a ride back to Reykjavík. I went straight to Hotel Cabin where I met fellow students from University of Akureyri. Every year the school committee organizes a trip to Reykjavík where students stay at Hotel Cabin for three nights while traveling around Reykjavík to visit companies and organizations that introduce their work and give us tours around their workplaces. There are a few joint tours, but the students are divided in to 7 smaller committees for each study department so we mostly do trips focused on our specialty.
Although this sounds like a very professional trip it really isn’t. It’s very nice to get the opportunity to visit all these companies but this is mainly a party trip so we went downtown every night and in the mornings most people had opened a can of beer within the hour.
Hotel Cabin is not so far from the Downtown, but the weather wasn’t all that great so we usually took taxi back which is pretty expensive. The dream would have been to have this trip during summer time so we’d be able to walk more around town. My friend and I got a room with a window faced to the sea. The window was pretty big compared to the tiny room we stayed in, so it sometimes got very cold although we turned the heater all the way up. But at least we got a window that opened to the outside unlike other people who had a window that opened up in the hallway. They didn’t really mind since our group almost filled the floor and we didn’t spend so much time at the Hotel anyway. We also got the rooms at a fair price so it wasn’t all that bad.
After very tough three days in Reykjavík the majority of students went back to Akureyri with the bus. I on the other hand got a car to drive back so I was able to travel at my own pace and arrived back into town a bit earlier than the bus.
I was so exhausted after all this travel, but I was still so happy with how everything turned out. I was able to arrange my time very well and was very lucky that these two events fitted so well into schedule.
I didn’t realize I had taken such a few photos until I started writing the blog, but I’ll put the rest of the photos from last week in a gallery on the bottom of the page.
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– Helga Sunna
Helga's Travels 
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