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Published: January 19th 2009
Visit to Reykjavik.
The first thing that any visitor to Reykjavik should do is to visit the Tourist Information Centre at Aðalstræti 2 • IS-101 Reykjavík. Ask anyone, it is in the downtown Reykjavik area and is the Tourist Centre where you meet for walking tours throughout the day. They have a number of well kept secrets the biggest being the Reykjavik Welcome Card, it costs about $12 per day and gives you free travel on all the Strætó City Buses and the Viðey Island Ferry. You can also pop into this centre during the day for free Internet access with this card. The card also gives you unlimited free admission to the following which are open during the holiday season including June, July and August: -
- All Reykjavik Thermal pools, there are seven of them but does not include the Blue Lagoon.
- Reykjavik City Museum Arbæjarsafn
- The Settlement Exhibition
- Reykjavik Maritime Museum
- The Culture House
- ASI Art Museum
- The Natural History Museum
- The Family Park & Reykjavik Zoo
- The Nordic House
- The West Nordic Culture House in Hafnafjordur
- The Living Art Museum
- The National Gallery of Iceland
- The Sigurjón Olafsson Art Museum
- Reykjavik Museum of Photography
Honestly, the three day stopover after our tour was not long enough to visit all of these places; we would probably have needed a full week to see everything. We didn’t waste any time, arriving in the City by 8:30 a.m. each day and staying until closing time wherever we were visiting. We certainly received really good value on our visitor cards. Most museums have conducted tours, in several languages including English, throughout the day, these are either a nominal charge or free and seem to be the best way to see all that is available. Incidentally we found that most people in Iceland, especially the younger ones, speak much better and clearer English than a British Native.
Whilst at the Tourist Centre we collected free maps of the city, the bus routes along with timetables and brochures on many of the places that we intended to visit.
Two of our three days were spent in Museums so we do not have any photographs, our main pictures from Reykjavik are included in the Iceland Complete Blog.
We did spend almost a full day on Viðey Island, we had expected to see everything in a couple of hours but the place and its history was just far too interesting.
This is where we start the short five minute trip over to the island.
The crew tell us that during some very busy weekends this boat can carry just over 100 passengers over to the island, I suppose the fact that everyone in Iceland knows everyone else helps. Only 30 people took the trip at the same time as us.
Our first view of the island, the large building is a restaurant.
This building has a roof insulated with grass sods.
This is the community picnic area which is usually booked out at weekends, during the week anyone can pop in.
This is a memorial to John Lennon designed by Yoko Ono. It has lots of panels each carrying the message “Imagine Peace” along with the above dedication. I don’t know what John Lennon would have thought of the laser light display that squirts high powered beams of light into the sky, this area would have been one of the least polluted on earth if it were not for those lasers.
This is a memorial to a ship that was wrecked in the above bay during April 1906 with the loss of 20 lives. The ship seems to have been of American origin but because the plaque is in Icelandic I cannot be too sure.
Here we have some more organ pipe type of volcanic rock formations, this seem to be found all over Iceland but they are not too common in the rest of the world.
When strolling around the island we came across a large well maintained building and to our surprise found that it was open to the public. It was very warm inside having continuous geo-thermal heating. We must have spent a couple of hours looking at many photographs and reading the notes that were provided with them. It was very clear that this island was a thriving community until the mid fifties coinciding with the start of the cod wars, as we all know most of the fish has now gone and Iceland is looking for some other kind of community; with the current exchange rates tourism should be doing very well. We arrived before the big downturn that resulted in crashing exchange rates, prices seemed very reasonable, now everything should be a bargain.
Here is something else that kept us on Viðey Island much longer than expected. Here are the remains of the old buildings; these are accompanied by descriptive plaques of the residents and were written so well that we could easily imagine exactly what it was like before the community came to and end.
One building was a hostel for the fish processing factory workers. Towards the end there was an unfortunate fire which resulted in total destruction of the building, a few days later the company went into liquidation, this was the main factor that triggered the end of the island economy.
The island provided high quality water to ships visiting Reykjavik. In the days before effective filtration the water on the mainland tended to contain too much sulphur which could affect the water tanks on the ships. These are the remains of the original water tank.
This is the original well that provided the good quality water for sale to visiting ships.
Club room facilities for the preservation society.
We had just enough time at the end of the day to have a look around the local shopping centre.
The traditional you can see what behind the Bonus shop, look for the yellow arches. We thought that Iceland was free of them but now that they have a foothold anything can happen.
Housing, not if it is private or public but seemed to be to a very high standard.
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AnnaAdventuring
Anna Louise
Nice to see your photos. Looks like you got to do a lot more in Rekyavik than I had time for in my recent trip. Iceland is such a beautiful country though... perhaps a return visit is in order sometime in the future! :) Enjoy your travels.