Wrapping it up.

I’m going to wrap this up now, k?

Sunday, August 28, 2011, the first day of clouds and rain in Reykjavik since we arrived.  We were supposed to travel home today, but due to Hurricane Irene’s closing JFK, we were stuck in Iceland for a few more days.  Oh darn!   Our apartment was already reserved by someone else, so Ellert agreed to move us into another of his apartments.  We left our bags in his office and walked over to the National Museum.   Here we learned, as Joan mentioned in her post,  that the male DNA of Icelanders is from Scandinavia and the female DNA is from the British Isles, meaning that when the Vikings’ women told the boys to go on without them, those plundering maniacs hit the drive-through for some girls to go.  Otherwise, we might have been Icelanders, Kath.

Leaving the museum, we hiked back to check in with Ellert, stopped at Bonus for groceries, and then walked on home for tuna sandwiches.  Delta had rebooked our return for six days later, so we spent the afternoon trying to find other flights that would get us home sooner.  Really, Delta?  Luckily, we were able to get flights out on Wednesday via Iceland Air.  This accomplished, we were whooped!  Kathie cooked chicken for salad and we watched CNN for a while, then went to bed.  (Post script:  In Delta’s defense, I understand from Kathie that Delta later refunded our fares.)

Monday, August 29^th – my birthday.  We slept in, had some breakfast, finished working on details for our return trip, showered, and had lunch.  We then walked along the shore drive, enjoying sculptures and architecture. 

If you can't read the sign on that last sculpture, be sure to enlarge it so you can.  

Back home for more salad, CNN, and reading.  The sun showed up exactly at 4 p.m. as predicted by Weather.com.  

On Tuesday, August 30th, we checked out of the apartment, left our bags with Ellert, and took off for the sculpture garden which we found was closed until 2 p.m.  Oh well, we’ll have to see that one when we visit again.   Along the way, we passed this interesting house.  

Yes, that’s grass on the roof.  Perhaps they have guinea pigs up there to eat the grass and keep it from getting too high?  I don’t suppose you could get a mower up there.

We strolled on over to the Nordic House on the campus of the University of Iceland.  

Nordic House was designed by Finnish modernist architect Aalvar Aalto in the sixties to house the university’s Nordic Languages department.  The building is one of his later works and features his signature traits, such as the ultramarine blue ceramic rooftop that takes its organic shape from the mountain row in the background, the central well in the library, and the extensive use of white, tile, and wood.  He also designed and installed the furnishings – lamps, furniture, book shelves, everything.  I so like Scandinavian design.

By now we were hungry so we decided to lunch in the facility’s Restaurant Dill, which serves “New Nordic” food.  We had some tasty Arctic char, while through the window we kept an eye on a fellow diner’s shepherd and another’s baby (left outside in its stroller).  Then we took a tour of the building with Aalvar (actually an actor since the real Aalvar has been dead since 1976), who told us that Restaurant Dill is the best in the city – or was that the best in Iceland?  

We hustled back to Ellert’s office to be picked up by Úlfar for the ride to our airport hotel (Hotel Keflavik).  Since it rained the rest of the afternoon and evening and there really wasn’t much to do outside the hotel, Kathie and I lazed around and read, had dinner, and went to bed – sad that we would leave Iceland in the morning.

Thus ended our fabulous trip to Iceland.  I hope you all don’t mind my memorializing these trips here – I think it’s so much nicer to read later than a diary.

Iceland 2011, Part 1

Joan's taking off for Iceland has inspired me to write about Kathie's and my trip there in late August 2011.  We actually stopped there on our way back from Ireland.  Here are some notes from our first day in Reykjavik.

On Tuesday, August 23^rd, 2011, we left the Mystic Rose in Killarney and parted ways in Limerick with Kathleen.  She left for home and we took off for Iceland – a place I had wanted to visit for a very long time. 

We were greeted at the airport by a tall young Viking employed by the tour company through which Kathie had booked our Iceland day tours.  We chatted as he drove us to Reykjavik through the dark; he told us he had lived for a short while in the town where Kathie lives.  We arrived at our apartment at 2 in the morning.  Even though exhausted from the long day of travel, we still noticed how nice our apartment was – it had a kitchenette, big screen TV attached to the wall in the small living area, and was essentially white on white – even the stone outer wall of our basement level bedroom was painted white.  It was very Scandinavian, yet homey and calming.  We brushed our teeth, threw ourselves into our white duvet-covered twin beds, and fell fast asleep.

On Wednesday morning we grabbed some breakfast at a bakery on Bergstathastraeti, hit up an ATM for some kronur, and headed for the 871+/-2 Settlement Museum.  Along the way we passed a tree wearing a sweater…

…and the parliament house with this lovely garden across the street.

About 871+/-2 in Frommer’s Iceland guidebook:

“In 2001…workers excavating an underground parking garage stumbled upon the remains of a Viking longhouse.  It turned out to be the oldest known evidence of human habitation in Reykjavik, dating from 871 plus or minus 2 years – thus the name of this engaging new museum.  The excavated ruin lies amid a large room, surrounded by high-tech panoramic displays that tackle the larger questions of why the Vikings came to Reykjavik, how they adapted to the conditions, and what the landscape originally looked like.  The ruin itself is basically just a wall foundation, and the museum’s greatest feat is to bring the longhouse back to life using digital projectors.”

I thought it was pretty cool to be right there where the early settlers actually lived and to be able to imagine their everyday lives with their families.

After that, we did lunch at the Sea Baron in the old port area, where we had some yummy lobster bisque with bread and some vegetable kebabs.  Of course, we followed all of this with ice cream before hitting the streets to do some sightseeing.

Hard to miss along the harbor is the huge national opera house that opened in May 2011.  Harpa is home to the Icelandic Symphonic Orchestra and the Icelandic Opera, and it hosts conferences, art exhibits, and small concerts.  Wouldn’t it be cool to go to a conference or concert here?

Of course, that last photo - the artsy one - is Kathie's.

On to Hallgrimskirkja, or Hallgrims’ Church.  If you’ve seen the movie “Thor”, you have a pretty good idea of what Hallgrimskirkja looks like.  Such a cool place but you can’t appreciate it fully until after you’ve been to Reynisfjara.  The architecture is striking, both inside and out.  That day, the light reminded me of Ohio in the winter.  I meditated in a ray of sun as we listened to an older gentleman practice on the massive (50 feet tall) organ, which was built in Germany in 1992 and has over 5,000 pipes.  Heaven.

After picking up some groceries at Bonus, Kathie and I had dinner at Salon, which was not fabulous.  Kathie developed an MSG headache.  Major drag.