Reykjavik, Iceland

 There is a lot of street art, both on the street ...

.... and on the buildings.

And that's it for this trip!

Reykjavik, Iceland

 Houses in Reykjavik have some interesting architecture.  They range from small houses with corrugated steel sheet siding to some impressive concrete (stucco?) houses.  Many (most?) of them have several curious features:  

a very plain unassuming front door,

on the side of the house,

with several steps leading up to it, and  

with little or no protection from the weather.

 

I thought this one was awfully cute.

And this one has a lot of potential.

Reykjavik, Iceland

Reykjavik has several nice looking churches.  This first is, Fríkirkjan, "The Free Church".

This is the Catholic Church, Landakotskirkja.

This is Hallgrímskirkja, the Lutheran church.

While wandering we noticed this rather long queue forming (also notice the range of clothing from puffy jackets, hats and scarves to t-shirts) so we went to investigate.

Turns out, this was the hot dog stand made famous by President Clinton.

Turf roofs are still popular.

The Sun Voyager is a sculpture intended it to convey the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom.  It is located along the waterfront.

 

Reykjavik, Iceland

 We spent two days wandering around the National Museum of Iceland.  There were a lot of interesting things to look at.  Two of my favorites are:

St. Olav, King of Norway - He is depicted in the armor of the 16th century. He holds his ax Hel ("Death") and his orb of office, as he tramples the devil in the form of a dragon, symbolizing his victory over paganism.  (I've never seen a dragon with a head like that!)

And a Memorial Tablet (the family portrait of the time).

He apparently had six sons and six daughters.  At least the wife and children have their names written under their generic representation.  (click on the picture to see a larger version)

An interesting fun fact about Iceland:  The horses of Iceland are a so-called gaited horse breed. This means that most Icelandic horses have two extra gaits to offer besides walk, trot and canter/gallop. All horse breeds have these three natural gaits and can perform them without training. The extra gaits that set the Icelandic horse apart from other breeds are called tölt and flying pace.  To learn more about this, head to this website:

https://www.horsesoficeland.is/the-icelandic-horse/gaits

Reykjavik, Iceland

Sadly, we were politely asked to leave the ship this morning.  Bummer!

We wandered around Reykjavik for a while to get familiar with the city.  This is the Coat of Arms for Iceland:

And fromWikipedia:  

"The coat of arms of Iceland displays a silver-edged, red cross on blue shield, alluding to the design of the flag of Iceland. It is the only national arms to feature four supporters: the four protectors of Iceland (landvættir) as described in Heimskringla, standing on a block of columnar basalt. The bull(Griðungur) is the protector of northwestern Iceland, the eagle or griffin(Gammur) protects northeastern Iceland, the dragon (Dreki) protects the southeastern part, and the rock-giant (Bergrisi) is the protector of southwestern Iceland. Great respect was given to these creatures of Iceland, so much that there was a law during the time of the Vikings that no shipshould bear grimacing symbols (most often dragonheads on the bow of the ship) when approaching Iceland. This was so the protectors would not be provoked unnecessarily."

We figured out how to find the street our hotel was on by looking for this sandwich board on the corner of one of the main streets.

We saw advertisements for some very unusual food.

And also experienced sticker shock at the prices of meals.  We purchased our lunch at a museum cafe.

Two sandwich wraps and two beers cost $33!!!!

This is the menu for a restaurant we walked by.

To convert from Icelandic Kronor, keep in mind that in Iceland they use the period rather than the comma as the thousands separator so we would write the cheeseburger with fries as 2,500 Kr.  Rather a startling figure!  But when you convert it to US dollars at a rate of 1 Kr = 0.0073 USD the cost becomes $18.25!  Yikes! 

We like the commitment to recycling.  This is a street trash bin with a holder for drink containers so they can be recycled.

We saw this sign so decided to have lunch here.

We thought the pizza was pretty much generally not bad.

This is the Islandic 5000 krona bill.  When I saw the picture with the needlework I wanted to know more.

On the front is Ragnheiður Jónsdóttir (1646–1715) a wealthy patron of the arts and an expert embroiderer.  On the reverse she is shown instructing young women in embroidery.  Introduced in 1986, it was the first Icelandic banknote to depict a woman.

This statue is called The Faceless Bureaucrat.  It is located near City Hall.  Icelanders have a great sense of humor.

The Golden Circle, Iceland

Today we were on an 8 hour tour of what is called the "Golden Circle", the most popular tourist route in the country.

Our first stop was at Thingvellir National Park, the only UNESCO World Heritage site on the Icelandic mainland, and one of the three stops on the Golden Circle sightseeing route.

Two of the greatest attractions in the park are the exposed North American and Eurasian tectonic plates; it is one of the only regions in the world where you can see geology such as this on land.

This is the view towards the Eurasian tectonic plate from standing on the edge of the American plate.

 It is also here that the world’s first democratically elected parliament (that remains functioning) was formed in 930 AD.

This is a glimpse of some of the amazing scenery.  The picture above was  taken from the top of the path in the picture below.

Our second stop was at the Gullfoss (‘Golden Falls’) waterfalls.  The water in Hvítá river travels from the glacier Langjökull, before cascading 32 meters (105 feet) down Gullfoss’ two stages.   The first, shorter cascade is 11 meters tall (36 feet), while the second drop is 21 meters (69 feet). The canyon walls on both sides of the waterfall reach heights of up to 70 meters (230 feet).   In the summer, approximately 140 cubic meters (5000 cubic feet) of water surges down the waterfall every second.  This is the first cascade as seen from the top of the canyon.

We did not have time to climb down to see the second cascade (and most of us preferred not to get drenched by the spray) so this is a picture from the internet of what we missed.

According to Wikipedia:  Sigríður Tómasdóttir (1871–1957) was an Icelandic environmentalist whose activism helped preserve Gullfoss waterfalls, protecting it from industrialization. She is widely seen as Iceland's first environmentalist and is memorialized on a sculpture near Gullfoss.

The third stop was at Geysir, the famous hot spring in the geothermal area of Haukadalur Valley.  Geysir is most well-known for having lent its name to geysers all around the world.

 

This geyser is named Strokkur. 

Here is the information board at the site.  The English translations are below the Icelandic. Click on the picture to see a larger version.