Iceland - Day 1

It's holiday time again, this time Mark, Martin, Keith and Cederic head to Iceland (the country, not the shit supermarket where Kerry Katina lives).

It was an early start for Keith and Stuart getting up at 4:45 in order to get to Birmingham. Mark had organised the timings with military precision in order to get there on time. Martin then collected everyone from Marks place and before you knew it we'd been in a car, on a train, a monorail and was at the airport.

In fact we were so early the airport wasn't open and we had to sit around for a while until we could check in.

Going through security was a doddle, until it came to Keith who got searched, body scanned and anal probed. He now walks with a limp.

The flight was on time, and we even left a few mins early, the pilot then gunned it and we arrived in Iceland 40 mins early. Result.

We were due to meet someone from the hire car place at the airport, and there were lots of people holding up signs. Could this finally be the moment that Marks life had led to where they'd be someone holding a sign with his name on it? That life ambition was looming, tension was high. But no, the guy was late and he just had a generic sign. Dream shattered.

The weather in Iceland was rainy and grey. Being Englanders we were used to this, in fact, we were in our element.

We picked up the hire car, but was given a substitute car as ours was having its headlights replaced?!

We headed off and immediately had a challenge, the road that the satnav had chosen for us to get from the hire car hire place to the motorway was a dirt track through a quarry! This obviously was done at full throttle to ensure that there was less time for anything to go wrong!

On the motorway we learned the full extent of how bad the car is. Firstly, despite being the largest car ever, there is no room, Mark gets pain if he has to move his foot onto the break, Keith can't sit up straight and Martin's head sticks out of the sunroof.

All of this would be fine if the car was in good working order but unfortunately the engine warning light is permanently on, another unknown warning light comes on occasionally, the fuel guage goes from full to empty and back every 30 secs and when on full lock, the tyres scrape on the wheel arches. I'm sure it'll be fine, it's not like we're doing 2000 miles in a snowy hostile environment in the middle of nowhere. Plus we may have chosen to not go with any of the insurance /breakdown options.

Anyway, we made it to our accommodation easily, it was a large hostel where we had a private room to ourselves. Unfortunately there were bunk beds and a double bed, so after a brief argument we settled on the sleeping arrangements.

It was time for a beer so we called a cab and headed to the city centre. The taxi was a 4 min journey and cost £20 but it was raining a lot and we had no idea where we were going.

We'd been recommended places to eat and drink but the map had screwed up and we couldn't be arsed standing around in the rain figuring it out, so we went in the first place we found.

The food was pretty good, and the beers were welcome, we even had dessert. Cederic ordered some "stuff that's better than vodka" which the waitress called "black death " which he necked. On to the pub!

Found a decent underground pub which had a few people in, so we ordered some drinks and holy fuck... 3 beers and a vodka cost £60!

So after nursing the drinks, savouring every drop and licking out the glasses, we moved on.

We stocked up at the supermarket where the prices were equally extortionate and got a cab back to the hostel.

It was time to nail the duty free, we had 3 litres of vodka and now we had mixers we could have a good go of it.

Keith managed to lose everything, so far today he's lost his car keys, phone and medication, and he hasn't even unpacked yet.