Touring Reykjavik

    I made it until almost 9 last night and slept well and long so I was ready to tour the town today.  We have breakfast included with all of our hotels, so we stopped at the very nice buffet on the top floor of the hotel to begin our day.  The food is good, but the strong European coffee with cream is the best!

     We took a doubledecker bus tour of the city.  It's a hop on / hop off tour that gave us info about the city and also got us to the National Museum of Iceland where we learned a lot about the history of this country.  My forefathers and mothers, the Vikings were the first to discover and settle here.  By 930 A.D. the Viking chieftans had gathered into a formal alliance and established a government making it the worlds oldest Parliament.  For a long time Iceland was independent, but times got hard and Norway took over.  Eventually Noway was taken over by Denmark and Iceland was ruled by the Danes until 1944.  

     Our bus tour answered some other questions.  There are very few trees and almost no wood buildings in Reykjavik.  I thought it was because of the volcanic nature of the island, but we were told that there were forests until some very cold periods in the early settlement days when most of the trees were cut for fuel and shelter.  There's a big plan to reforest the island now.

    There are great environmental efforts to reduce waste and use renewable energy.  The vast majority of homes and businesses are heated with geothermal energy.  The hot water smells a bit sulphury when you first turn it on.  The cold water, however is delicious- like our cabin well water.

    We did the full bus tour and finally got off at the tallest structure in Iceland, the Hallgrimskirkja, which is the also the largest church in Iceland.   It is set on a high point above the harbor so it was a beautiful walk down into the old downtown in the sunshine.  We like to eat at interesting places, but I must admit that we stopped for a cheap, quick lunch was at a Subway sandwich shop.  There are lots of American fast food places, except McDonalds and Burger King which are gone due to the high franchise costs.

     Our dinner, however was at a spot with many Icelandic speaking folks.  We ordered lamb soup which was served in huge bowls!  Jo and I had this when we visited relatives in Norway almost 50 years ago and we still talk about it.  This version was delicious too!  We topped dinner off with a shared dessert of three scoops of ice cream covered in strawberries and real whipped cream.  I am so full!

     Tomorrow we start our drive around the island.