Day 27 – 5 August 2023 – Reykjavik, Iceland

Up at 4.30 am, organise our bags & ourselves, marvel once again as the water flushes down spinning in the other direction to home. We are out the door of the hotel by 5.15 am & take the short walk to the metro station, there are people standing on the platform already waiting & in no time the next driverless train was there. We travel a few stops & get off at Christianshavn, the next train arrives in the other direction just as we get off to take us to the airport. We must be on the right train, there are lots of other travellers with luggage bags heading the same way. The Metro train gets to Kobenhavn Airport just before 6 am so we have plenty of time to check our bags & go through security before our flight at 8 am.

Our flight to Iceland takes just on 3 hours & our clock changes by 2 hours (we gained 2 hours).  It is raining as we descend down through the low cloud, damn. Thankfully our bags are on the carousel & our driver is waiting at the exit for us & we are in the car on the way from the airport into the capital, Reykjavik.  It takes around a 40 minute drive from Keflavik Airport to our hotel. He drops us at the hotel, we are too early to check in, but we can leave our bags so we go for a walk into town. The rain is only light & misty, a nuisance more than anything else, good that we have our rain jackets on though.

The main shopping street is based on the old port town & runs down the hill from our hotel to the port. It is a very long shopping street, there are many restaurants, café, bars with some interesting wares. The shops are a mix of old & new buildings, with a lot of the shops catering for the tourist trade. There are a few cruise ships in today, including a large Holland America ship, the “Rotterdam” & the town is packed with tourists, mainly American & French. We are drawn to the harbour to check out the ships, but we found some very interesting boards with maps, history & the ships that sank from when records began, my goodness a lot of ships & seaman had perished around this island. We are hungry for lunch & we found a place to sit outside (it isn’t raining anymore & very pleasant with our coats on) & have lunch (or we thought, Iceland time it was breakfast).

After lunch we continue to explore the town, we reach the spot where the town was first settled, with parts of the ruins dated to 871 A.D. & read the historical signs that tell us about the first buildings. We turn & start heading back up, admiring lots of murals on walls, some quirky, others more traditional. We spot a street painted with rainbow colours, then look up & spot this most amazing building. It is Iceland’s new Lutheran church “Hallgrimskirkja” standing 73 metres tall & absolutely captivates us (& all the other tourists) with the modern style & its sheer presence, it is a stunning building.

When we walk inside the church it is just as modern & stunning inside, an architectural masterpiece. The new organ has 5,275 pipes, can you imagine cleaning all of them. The font is another work of art, cast from glass. The ceiling is so impressively high & the domed arches are a work of art in themselves. The Lutheran church must have plenty of money to have this amazing building created. We walk through some back streets, not very far, find our hotel again, thankfully, then check in properly & settle into our room.

Back out again we walk down to the sea & follow the shore along to the “Sun Voyager” sculpture, an imposing & interesting looking piece of polished metalwork installed in 1986. The sculpture loosely resembles a ship & is interesting to view. We turn back up towards the main street, admiring some of the new apartment blocks with water views, the apartments must cost a lot. We browse along looking in the shops & find a bakery, the “Sand Bar”, so we stop & have a bite to eat there for an early dinner. We are a bit peckish as we have lost out with the change of time & with Copenhagen time being 7 pm it is only 5 pm in Reykjavik. The restaurants don’t start serving dinner till 6 pm so the pizza, some pastries, coffee & hot chocolate goes down well.  We got used to being catered for on the cruise, now we will have to organize ourselves with food. The bakery food is good & we walk slowly back up the main street & back to our hotel, weary & tired. A good day.