Friday, March 27: Last Hours in Reykjavik (Iceland)

We bid our rented house goodbye this morning, loaded up the car, and headed into Reykjavik for a few final Iceland hours. Our primary destination was the Braud & Co bakery for cinnamon rolls, which Andrew had read about in Travel & Leisure. They did not disappoint. It was truly the best pastry I have ever had, anywhere. 

We bought a few souvenirs (Lucia bought herself a ring; Greta got a necklace with a little puffin charm; I bought a book of poetry set in the Bonus supermarket, the highest-selling poetry collection ever in Iceland). A few of us had a final pylsur. We walked to the harbor and popped in to see the Harpa concert hall. Our final stop was, again, Braud & Co, where we got more cinnamon rolls and other items for the flight home. It was very windy and cold and we all agreed, pastries in hand, that it was time to head to the airport to return our rental car and catch our flight. 

A pause here to praise Andrew, who drove us all around Iceland this week in all kinds of weather. We saw so much because he was not afraid to drive a giant car with studded tires through snowstorms, across icy roads, past abandoned cars in snowdrifts. In all ways, of course, he is amazing, but his game-ness in driving in other countries is always awe-inspiring. We all managed to go the entire week without "the wind blowing up the door" of the car, as we were warned about many times by both the rental company and stickers on the car windows.

Though we'd arrived at the airport in plenty of time, Keflavik was experiencing a huge disruption in their passport control staffing, and the line snaked around endlessly. Every international flight was scheduled to leave at 5pm, and at 4:40, we were still in the line. But our flight was held just long enough for everyone to board, and we ended up not even leaving too far past our scheduled time.

We landed in Baltimore, got our luggage, and drove to Molly's, where we had some snacks and told her, Jeremy, and Luca about the trip. We'll spend the night with her tonight and drive home to Pittsburgh in the morning.

And that's Spring Break 2026. One of our best trips yet.