Reykjavik Second Tour

     We returned our car yesterday.  Parking is almost nonexistent in the downtown streets and limited to two hours at a time.  Our hotel is located very conveniently to the harbor and a lot of restaurants, but fairly far from most museums.  I spent last night trying to work out the city bus system and the maps and finally gave it up.  We looked at taking a taxi, but they are really expensive and we don't see many.  Rick suggested that we just get another hop on/hop off bus ticket and ride places on that, so we did!

     Our initial destination was the Maritime Museum.  It is located in a building that used to be a fish processing plant down on the fishing wharf.  The focus of the museum is on cod fishing and how Iceland's early economy was built by the export of dried and salted cod.  Volcanic eruptions and subsequent years of extremely cold weather killed much of the vegetation and livestock on Iceland.  The seas surrounding the island were full of cod, however, and the Icelandic fishermen were skilled at catching cod.  The cod became a reliable source of food and income.  The picture below is a cod fishing boat.

    A very good film reinacted a day in the life of 19th century cod fishermen as they went out in a wooden boat to catch cod, bring it to shore to the fishing hut where they cleaned and salted the fish.  The film and the artifacts at the museum gave us a good look at the history.  A section of the museum told the story of the "cod wars" between Britain and Iceland as the nations disagreed on how close to Iceland the British are allowed to fish.  There have been four sets of "cod wars" since around 1400.  Each time Britain has lost and each time Iceland has extended the boundaries further out until currently only Icelandic fishermen can fish within 200 miles of Iceland.

     We hopped back on the bus and jumped off near the long main street of Reykjavik, Laugavegur.  This is a very active area with lots of shops and cafes.  Some blocks are closed to traffic during the day and folks ride bikes, push baby strollers, sit outside the cafes, and wander from shop to shop.  The sun was out for a while and we really enjoyed just watching the action.  I found a sandwich shop that was NOT a Subway, so we stopped for lunch.  We are totally spoiled by the delicious bread served everywhere.  Some is very dark and dense, some is light and crusty, but all delicious!

    As we ate we remembered a few other interesting items:  we can get good, fast WiFi everywhere - hotels, restaurants, in our car, but we never see utility poles except for the main power lines going cross country.  While crowd watching we must note that everyone wears really skinny black pants - men and women.  Finally, we have noticed that American jazz and Country/western music is played everywhere. We were eating breakfast at an Icelandair hotel and enjoying the morning jazz.  We had to laugh when one of the waiters, thinking that everyone was gone from the breakfast room, turned off jazz and began to play a very old version of Volaré.

     We have one more buffet breakfast tomorrow, a walk along the harbor, a long ride to the airport, and and even longer flight home.  I will be happy to sleep in my own bed tomorrow.