Well a more normal night of sleep saw us head off a little earlier and slightly more clear headed. So clear headed in fact that when we passed the a statue to the founder of Reykjavic, Ingolfur Arnanson, Marjan thought his first words might have been "This looks like a cold, inhospitable, dump of a place. Let's live here!"
We are actually quite liking Reykjavic. It is a fairly calm, inviting place. The weather has so far been friendly and there is enough to keep us amused. We walked down to Harpa again and walked along the harbour. There is a fair bit of work going on....an Icelandic docklands, if you like. The difference being that together with the touristy bits there is a fair bit of heavy industry, particularly fishing, going on. A small boat seemed to have an extraordinary catch of mackerel....ready for dinner tonight.
We walked out to a public, living sculpture called Þúfa, apparently pronounced Tinkerbell....or at least that is as much sense as I can make of Icelandic sounds at present. It is essentially a grassy knoll from which to view Reykjavik across the harbour. It also has an old style Icelandic fish drying hut at the top.
I kept pointing out the sights to Marjan
More strolling, a coffee and another hot dog saw the morning and lunch off. It started to rain, but we were prepared...Marjan had her hooded fleecy windcheater, I had on my winter weight T-shirt....nonetheless we decided to head indoors for a short break.
After giving our feet a bit of a break, we headed out again along the main shopping street. As you will know Marjan and I consider shopping an unpleasant necessity, like work perhaps, and so whilst it was interesting to see the similarities and differences, my eye kept being drawn to the occasional glimpse of sea and mountains at the cross roads.
One of the interesting things we noted was the number of very nice looking book shops. If you lived here you could have a coffee at each one during weekdays and then go to the mountains on weekends.
We ended up outside the main commercial centre in some areas that were much grimmer. One particular street could have been, and probably was, straight out of a Arnaldur Indriðason novel.
So they do things to brighten it up.
We checked out the church again, and this time read the blurb on Leif Erikson on his statue. Impressive guy, apparently apart from trumping Columbus, he did similar to Marconi and, most importantly for an Icelander, Niels Bohr. Just kidding...............
Anyway we wandered, and wandered, and found ourselves, accidentally on purpose, near the Sea Baron. Apparently the best lobster soup in town. Haven't tasted any others so I can hardly compare, but the soup was very nice, the bread plentiful and the follow up wolffish skewer very tasty indeed. The place was tiny though........probably sat 20 on rough wooden tables with small barrels for seats.....a local institution we were told......by the guy getting 10% commission.......
Well, we are both feeling much better after the rigours of the trip, and ready and willing to hit those mountains. We pick up the car and head to Iceland's first national park, Snæfellsjökull, to see why Jules Verne based his idea of the centre of the earth entrance there.......and maybe a see a waterfall along the way. But we are sad to be leaving Reykjavic.
No comments:
Post a Comment