Reykjavik

Good night’s sleep in a lovely spacious room. Pity we have to leave it. Off to a late breakfast and then time to close our up cases again, leave them in storage at the hotel and head off to the main road which is Laugavegur. It is the longest shopping street in Reykjavik and has such a wonderful assortment of different buildings, shop fronts, street art and stores.

Plenty of opportunity for souvenir shopping... and yes anon sis, I haven’t forgotten you! According to my research, tourism is now ore important to Reykjavik’s economy than fishing. We didn’t go into the Icelandic Phallological Museum that I saw from the bus last night, but it claims to know everything about dicks, and that’s a direct quote! Hilarious...

I am gob smacked at the amount of new buildings going up all over the place.The population in Iceland is about 348,500 and overa third of them are in Reykjavik. In 2008 there were some 500,000 tourists and in 2017 some 2,195,000 so I can certainly understand the shift in economic focus.
We slowly make our way up Skolavoroustigur to the awesome Hallgrimskirkja church. In front of the church a stouter of Leifur the Lucky watched ove us as we made our way into the church.

There as a children’s programme occurring inside the church when we arrived at midday to D and G got in the queue for the left to go to the very top which about 70 odd metres, they said the views were amazing, but they were bitterly cold. I stayed in the foyer and decided I’d be much happier just looking at their photos. When the children were finished, the church was opened and we were able to go in. We then wandered back down the street and continued on intoBankastraeti. As we were only a couple streets from the ocean, and didn’t we know it when the wind blew! I managed to get us right at the famous hot dog food truck that SB and I visited last night. sB is vegetarian, but even she tried them and loved them.

After our hot hod lunch on tone go we made a slow pace back the wat we’d come. There are no shortage of museums here and lots of photo opps.

We had a look inside the cathedral and continued back to our hotel, but only after stopping for hot chocolate (apparently the world’s best according to the guy making them.. . and they were pretty darn good.)

Once finally back at the hotel after battling really strong icy winds during the last part of our walk, we gather up our suitcases and hail a taxi to take us to the Natura hotel for our overnight stay. This is the same hotel SB and I stayed in about 4 years ago when we visited Iceland fir the first time. My room is nice, but it doesn’t compare with the Fosshotel. Anyway I have time to do what I hope will be the last of my hand washing and for dinner we have decided to try the restaurant dining room. I’ve warned the others that it isn’t cheap but we are prepared for that. What we weren’t prepared for though that it now only a buffet and there is no alternative menu. We didn’t want to be paying about $60 each for a buffet that we wouldn’t get valuefrom. So instead I bought a sandwich and mini bottle of wine from the reception are and D & G did similar although Foggy isn’t feeling well with a horrid sore throat and cough so just had a fruit salad. We all agreed that we had ha$ a great day, but as we get underway tomorrow on our organised tour we are having an early night. So that’s your lotfor now.