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.