First two days in Reykavik

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Well…here we are in Reykjavik.  We arrived, at 8:30 Thursday morning (we’re 7 hours ahead of Seattle) and Arnar, whose sister’s home we are staying in, picked us up, took us to the market and got us somewhat acclimated to our immediate surrounds, took our luggage in (maybe he thought we were too old to carry it ourselves) and has been an all around terrific host.  He and his family and sister are going to come to Mexico in January after a ski trip to Whistler.

Iceland is really interesting  and very different from other foreign cities we’ve both been to.  Driving to the area  right outside of Reykjavik, where we are staying, felt like parts of the Big Island of Hawaii with miles and miles of Lava fields.

The apartment where we’re staying is delightful with a sweet patio off the living room and cozy down comforters on the bed which we were able to try out by taking a short nap.  The weather is cool (apparently it never gets real sunny here) but very pleasant. 

After our nap we headed into Reykjavik to explore.  The town is small and very charming.  There is an amazing church on the edge of town (see photo) and is quite an architectural feat.  We checked out the menus on the sidewalk (of course) trying to find a restaurant that was somewhat affordable.  The prices here are very high but we finally found one, the “Viking”, and had a fabulous meal, even though we opted to pass up the $7 ice tea and $8 beer for delicious water.  I had ocean catfish….probably the best fish I’ve ever had and Bill’s lamb was delicious as well.

We did a lot of walking and the old (or rather new) hip is holding up perfectly.  We wanted to stay up as late as we could to get ourselves on this new time zone.  It’s very odd when you keep expecting  it to get dark and it never does.

So…good night for now and look for the next installment.

Day Two in Reykjavik……we got a great night’s sleep and went back into town to check out the tourist info center for maps and info on how to do the Golden Circle.  This is about an eight hour day trip to the most interesting sites in the area.  We’re planning this for Sunday. 

Did a lot of walking and took a lot of photos which we’ve posted and went up to the tower of the church.  Then, we went swimming in one of the indoor thermal pools right in the city with hot tubs outside.  Bill got in free because he’s old and I had to pay $4.  The pool was great and we met an interesting guy from Edmonton who’s lived here for 3 years.  We had a nice home cooked meal and are fine tuning our Blog.  We have to pace our eating out or we’ll be broke by the time we get to the Netherlands.  We’ll probably go to the Blue Lagoon tomorrow and poke around the surrounding areas.