Rain and Beer in Reykjavik

We’ve left the sun behind in Finland! After a leisurely breakfast we set out to see the sights of Reykjavik in a drizzly rain that lasted all day. A stroll down the main shopping street, Laugavegur , we checked out a selection of the ( many) souvenir stores before a arriving down in the older part of the city.

Reykjavik has many quaint, colorfully painted homes and we saw a few really pretty ones in this oldest part of town.

Relight beside “The Pond” is Reykjavik City Hall. Inside there’s a huge relief map of the entire country which helps give you a feel for how many glaciers there are in Iceland and just how large they are.

“The Pond”is a pretty, small lake which freezes over in winter and is used as a skating rink. In summer the local children come down to feed the ducks. We crossed the pedestrian bridge and met the “Faceless Bureaucrat”, a quirky statue overlooking the Pond.

From bureaucrats to politicians , the next stop was Iceland’s parliament building. The Icelanders claim to have the oldest parliament in the world, called the Alpingi, it started in around 930but the current building only dates from 1811.

All this politics and bureaucracy was making us hungry so we dropped in at Baejarins Beztu Pylsur, a famous hot dog stand in the middle of the city. Hot dogs are the fast food of choice in Iceland and this particular stand was made famous when Bill Clinton’s sampled one of their wieners when he was visiting Iceland. We queued up to try a couple, very tasty!

From here it was a short walk out to the shoreline to see the spectacular Harpa Concert Hall, a huge performance space and concert venue that seems almost too big for such a relatively small city. However it’s glass walls reflect the light both inside and out and it was beautiful even on a grey day.

We followed the path from Harpa down along the Barbour shoreline to the Old Harbour area, passing a spectacular Russian tall ship along the way. Simon googled its name and we discovered it is the second largest sailing ship in the world and used by the Russian navy as a training ship.

I asked Simon to pose with the two fishermen of the “Facing the Sea” statue because in his black beanie he reminded me of a fisherman! The statue was created by Ingi Th. Gíslason and unveiled in 1997. It is meant to remind the citizens of Reykjavik that it was fishermen who were responsible for the prosperity that transformed Reykjavik from a town into a city.

Our final stop in the harbour was the Bryggjan Brugghus, the only micro brewery in Reykjavik. We spent quite a while here doing the short tour and enjoying a sample of their brews with a tasty late lunch of fish and chips.

The walk back up to the apartment was very chilly but we stopped into a few more shops en route and saw a few interesting city murals.

After our big late lunch we’ve decided to stay in tonight and have a light dinner of chips, biccies and cheese. Tomorrow we hit the road again!