Most of the day was spent in transit, Simon and Jatta met us in the lobby just after ten and we hit the road back to Helsinki airport. Everything went very smoothly with checkin and we had our Icelandair boarding passes all ready to go. The flight was a bit over 3 hours and passed quickly with good in flight entertainment.
Before leaving the airport we made a quick stop in the Duty Free shop, all the guides to Iceland suggest buying your alcohol here rather than pay the eye-watering prices in the state run liquor store. We have a few self catering stays booked so it will be nice to relax and enjoy a cozy meal and a drink in the evening to mull over the events of the day.
It was a nice surprise at the car rental desk to be upgraded to a better car but I’m glad they didn’t charge us for the second car that somehow seemed to have been attached to our booking! Just a glitch in the system I guess.
The landscape on the 40 minute drive to Reykjavik was a taste of what we can expect this week, and such a change from Finland with its miles of forests. Here there wasn’t a tree to be seen anywhere.
We made a stop on the way to pick up a few food provisions for our breakfast and tonight’s dinner before we arrived at Grettisgata 50 apartment which is a nice little 2 bedroom place right in the downtown area.
The only issue was parking, there was nothing in the street out front so the boys dropped Jatta and me with the luggage while they went off to hunt for something. Luckily they found a spot in the street nearby.
It was after 6 by now but we’d driven past the Halgrimmskirkja Cathedral which dominates the town from its spot at the top of the hill, and we were keen for a closer look so we put on an extra layer of clothing and headed out the door.
Jatta made friends with one of the many local cats that are a popular house pet here. Dogs were banned in the city until 1984 for health reasons!
The Cathedral is a striking structure. State Architect State Architect Guðjón Samúelsson‘s design of the church was commissioned in 1937. He is said to have designed it to resemble the trap rocks, mountains and glaciers of Iceland’s landscape. We took the elevator to the top for a fabulous view out over Reykjavik. In the distance we could see steam rising from the ground. . At the front of the church is a statue of Leif Erickson, a Norse explorer from Iceland whose famous for visiting North America before Columbus
We waited for the ride back down in a room behind the clocks
After that we walked down to see the Sun Voyager statue down on the shore, designed in the shape of a Viking ship.
By this stage we were all flagging a bit , it was after 11 pm for our body clocks! So we trekked back up the hill to the apartment and tucked into chicken pasta and salad with an Icelandic beer and French Wine, a great finish to our first day in the “Land of Fire and Ice”