Reykjavik day two — Jim Winslett

Today was supposed to be rainy and cold.

To be fair, it did rain off and on all night last night and the temps dropped considerably ( to around 4C ) but it was back up to a balmy 12C today with a breeze and sunshine(!)

We took advantage of the nice weather and went back into the city centre.

We passed the Lobsterhouse restaurant, but unfortunately it closed during covid and never re-opened.

We also stopped by city hall (the modern building on the left)

And then to Austurvöllur (public square) which has the Parliament building

I think the back of the Parliament building is prettier:

I know what you’re thinking: that’s really small for a Parliament building!

But keep in mind that the entire population of Iceland is only about 320,000 people… or around 1/4 the population of Calgary.

Architecture here is rather plain, but folks make use of colour to make it interesting

There are also collared cats that hang out.

f you think letting your cat outside unattended is strange, Icelanders typically leave their kids in the baby carriage outside the pub while they’re inside with friends as well. It’s a custom left over from hundreds of years of living in sod houses half-buried and stinky/ smoky. It was in the baby’s best health interest to sleep outdoors if possible and the crime rates here are so low that folks didn’t ditch the custom in later years. We haven’t seen any of that - probably because it’s high tourist season and we’re right in the tourist area of town - but I’m told that it is still a thing.

Reykjavik’s population is around 122,000 and it’s still at its heart just a fishing village. In the quieter streets, it still looks the part.

And being a fishing community, we had to try the fish n chips. Nothing fancy, just two small cod and a handful of fries, plus a local beer (Gull = ‘gold’)

Are you ready for this? Price of that meal was $80 CAD. That’s why we haven’t seen any fat Icelanders, I guess!

We walked around Hallgrímskirkja - which was named for Icelandic poet/ preacher Hallgrímur Pétursson… even though everyone calls it “Leif Erikson’s church” because of the statue of the explorer out front, but the statue predates the church.

(Photo is from 2015 - didn’t get a shot of the statue this trip.)

Speaking of 2015… I noticed in those pics how dingy the church looked….

They apparently did some cleaning since then, because it looks really nice today!

Not far from there is a sculpture garden, which was pretty… even if I found some of the sculptures creepy.

One thing I noticed here is how common electric cars are. That makes since, as the whole island is a volcano and electricity is generated via geothermal. Icelanders’ electric bills are ridiculously low, making it much cheaper to drive electric. Gas here is $3.45/liter!

We walked back to the hotel along the waterfront and I managed to snap a pic of the Sun Voyager sculpture in between bouts of it being climbed on or having random strangers in the shot.

We did a quick stop in Harpa, the performing arts centre

And while it’s really beautiful on the outside, it’s inside where you really get a sense of the beauty of it

This next pic is the ceiling - which is hard to grasp until you scroll down far enough to see the people at the railing

The concrete used for construction was mixed with volcanic ash, making it a dark charcoal grey… very elegant, for concrete.

…and how gorgeous is this bar?

After returning to the hotel, we discovered that our hotel no longer has a restaurant (other than the included breakfast) so off we went again on tired feet to find some dinner.

We ended up at a little coffee shop

To convert to CAD, put a decimal point in the number… so 990 would become $9.90 and 2190 becomes $21.90

Rob’s BLT and my Beef n Cheese were both delicious. The killer ‘dish’ though was my dessert: a licquorice latte

It’s hard to describe - the coffee definitely interacts with the liquorice flavour, making it taste not really like either thing. Quite tasty and something I’d gladly have again. The little sprinkles on top, though… WOW those are intense. It’s like someone took a pound of liquorice and squeezed all the flavour into that little speck. I made the mistake of scooping up a bunch on the spoon and trying them on their own. Whoooo, that was too much! Best to leave it mixed with the latte.

A little bit of window shopping and we found a shop cat in one of the shops. It was bored with us, I think.

Just across from our hotel, I noticed the viking statue was lit from the correct angle and I finally got a shot of it with his face showing.

After we got back to the room, I noticed that the sun had dropped enough to make some colour in the sky, so I went back out at midnight to get a pic.

Full disclosure: I was pointing right at the sun, so the camera was tricked into darkening the picture a LOT. Makes for nice colours, but it makes you think it actually gets kinda dark here at night. It doesn’t. Turning away from the sun, standing in the same spot, I got this shot of the back of Harpa: