A capital day

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This morning we are going into Reykjavik. It’s possible to get a bus from here but Ian claims he’s happy to drive.

I have located a good parking spot near the old harbour and the drive looks relatively straightforward. We just have to contend with the increase if traffic - which is nothing compared to other capital cities, but a lot compared to what we have become used to in Iceland!

Our journey involves a drive through a 6km tunnel which goes under the bay at Hvalfjordur, saving us around 80km of ‘driving round the inlet’ time.

We arrive at the old harbour area of Reykjavik, nabbing the one remaining space in the free parking area. Very handy as it’s also very near to the old town area that we want to be in.

We begin our walking tour walking through streets with the old colourful tin houses, making our way towards the old quarter and it’s cathedral. It’s quite busy already.

From here we make our way to the information centre, which has little information but excellent loo facilities. It’s a modern building on the edge of a lake. Somehow the old and the new seem to fit together seamlessly.

We enjoy some fine murals and some odd sculptures along the way.

Now we are in our way to Hallgrimskirma, the huge white church which dominates the area. We make our way via Rainbow Street with its myriad of posh tourist shops and eateries. They are pumping out the rich aroma of cinnamon buns…which is less tempting than normal when we work out they are a fiver each just for a take away from a bakery. We decide to give them a miss.

White van man ruins my photo by parking on the street - usually it’s numpty tourists but for once he is the only one there to annoy me.

There’s a very interesting art shop with some lava pieces in the window. An angry owner raps the window sharply at me for taking a photo. No offence meant…I would have deleted it if the sign language exchange had been less aggressive. Sorry, I try to gesture back, but keep my photo anyway!

A googlemaps van also passes us on the way up…so we will be checking that out with interest in a few weeks to see if we have made it into the ‘we wiz ere’ of the digital world!

Outside the church we have some interesting sculptures of ‘nude meets man in armour’ - very kinky I’m sure.

We enter the church. It has an elegant simplicity and provides a serene place to sit to recover our strength. The queue to take the lift to the top is quite long - we can’t be bothered to push our way through to the ticket office.

The weather is starting to turn as we leave the church. Relatively dry and warm is turning to drizzle. We decide to don rainwear and make our way to the nearby Sculpture Garden.

I really enjoy the sculptures - they are very well executed and cover some interesting topics such as ‘Thor struggling with age’ and ‘sleep’. Ian is looking a bit bored - not his thing!

Now we return to the old harbour area via another trendy pedestrian street with brightly painted hop scotch and a race track for the kids.

We’ve just reached the van. It’s now raining heavily. We dive in the back of the van for a late lunch.

What now? The rain is hammering, so the walk back along the sea front is abandoned and we decide to drive it instead! We’ve decided to return to the Akranes campsite. Tomorrow is our last full day and, if the weather improves, it’s a nice relaxing place to hang around.

The journey back from the capital city is equally busy but Ian is handling it well. I have decided to just shut my eyes.

We arrive back on site. The weather is, as suspected, no better here so we spend a couple of hours relaxing in the van before thinking of dinner.

I probably forgot to mention, eating here has been largely vegetarian. Other than bacon, we soon found our ‘fridge’, which is more of an efficient cold box, could not keep meat fresh fir long. We have enjoyed a lot of fried fish, full English fry ups and veggie curries. We are now using up the last of our reserves so it’s potato and red kidney bean curry tonight. Whilst we enjoy vegetarian food, I know I could never be a full convert and much less so vegan - I’ll be tucking into a rare sirloin the moment we return to the UK!

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