Day 2 – Sunday in Reykjavik

Hallgrímskirkja (Church)
So what do you do to kill time while waiting for your room and a nap? We hardly slept at all on the plane so we were both pretty tired. Fortunately we had a rental car and that gave us at least a little flexibility. We drove to the hotel just in case our room was available, but no luck as of 6 am. I had a list of suggestions for a day in Reykjavik but most of that proved unfeasible in the ice and darkness of the early morning. I suppose they don’t call it ICELAND for nothing. So we drove around in the downtown and waterfront area until we found a 24-hour market, bought some cinnamon pastries and drove back to the hotel parking lot to sleep for a bit in the car until about dawn, which, by the way, is 10:30 am in January. Our room was still not ready so we headed back to downtown Reykjavik again for sightseeing.

Organ and Choir
Our first stop was to attend mass at the Hallgrímskirkja which is the largest church in Iceland. The service was Lutheran (Denmark forced Iceland to convert in 1580 when they had control of the country) and in Icelandic but it was still a very beautiful service even if we couldn't understand much. There is a massive organ inside and the exterior of the church is designed to resemble a geyser.

Next we drove along the waterfront to see the Sólfar (Sun Voyager) sculpture. It is an iconic sight in Reykjavik and symbolizes the Viking heritage of Iceland. As our walking tour guide later told us, Vikings were really just pirates who were driven out of Norway, plundered and looted until they settled down in Iceland, where now they are “upgraded” to being Explorers.

Our next stop was to visit the flea market they hold every weekend, but it was really nothing special. Lots of used items and some food. They did have some very nice handmade Icelandic wool sweaters, but also very pricey. After the flea market we went back to the room for a 4-hour nap, had dinner out, and then back to the hotel for our 8:30 pm Northern Lights tour by bus.

Sun Voyager Sculpture
To see the Northern Lights you need a clear sky and unfortunately it was mostly cloudy as you can tell from the pictures. The trick then is to find an open spot in the clouds and the busses use sophisticated forecasting to find the openings.  We drove to one spot and the lights sort of started to be visible and then a snow storm hit almost immediately. We went to a second spot and no luck there. All in all we were out for maybe 5 hours and did not see any lights, but the tour guide kept us mildly entertained with elf and ghost stories. I know it sounds funny, but Icelanders still believe in elves to some extent.

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