Day One in Reykjavik

I've finally going to attempt to start blogging about our recent trip to Europe.  Hopefully I'll get the majority of it done before I head off to my next adventure in a week.

On the evening of April 14 Irv and I made the trip to Denver and boarded our flight to Reykjavik, Iceland.  Iceland Air has direct flights from Denver to Reykjavik so we decided to stop there for a couple days before continuing on to London.

We arrived at 6:00 a.m., made our way through customs and immigration then boarded a bus for the 45 minute drive to Reykjavik. 

 

The bus dropped us off at our hotel.  We had some breakfast, took a two hour nap, then our tour bus picked us up for a city tour of Reykjavik.

In Reykjavik there is one structure that dominates the skyline.  In the middle of the above photo you will see a giant church.  This is Hallgrimskirkja, a Lutheran church. 

I was excited that it was the first stop on our tour.  Pictures don't do it justice because it is huge and immensely beautiful. 

 

Another view from the front.  By the way, it was cold.  The wind was blowing and it was about 30 degrees, but the sun was shining so it was all good.

 

We were able to go inside.  This church isn't like your average European church with all the gold, elaborate woodcarvings and artwork.  It was beautiful, but very simple on the insde.  It had the above pipe organ which were lucky enough to hear when we came back to this church a couple days later (more on that later).

This little guy looked so beautiful outside the church.

Continuing our tour we were able to get some great views of the city.  I think it's beautiful with the bay and the mountains in the background.  So do you know what the population of Iceland is?  Believe it or not, only 330,000 people live on the island and 80% live in Reykjavik.

 

We stopped at a couple museums including the Sigurjon Olafsson Museum.  He did all these modern type sculptures--not really my thing, but beautiful!

 

Do you recognize this house?  It's called the Hofdi House, it's where Reagan and Gorbachav ended the cold war.

 

A really cool viking ship in the harbor.

 

This amazing glass building is called Harpa.  It's a concert hall and conference center.

 

This is a shot from inside Harpa.  It's me trying to get an artistic shot through the panes of glass.

 

We ditched the tour bus at Harpa and told our guide that we'd get ourselves back to our hotel.  A friend had recommended this fish & chip place down by the harbor so we wondered around until we found it.

 

I tried the local brew and it was quite good.  Irv of course always sticks with a Coca-cola.

 

Here's our fried cod.  I'm not a huge fan of fried food so this was okay, a bit greasy for my taste.  The food in Iceland is quite expensive.  For two orders of fish & chips, a beer and a soda it was about $66.

 

After dinner we were quite exhausted so we trekked back to our hotel.  You recognize the above hot dog stand.  President Clinton once stopped here for a dog.

 

It doesn't get dark in Reykjavik until very late because it's so far north.  We could have seen the northern lights if we wanted to stay up until 3:00 a.m.  We chose sleep instead.