June 5 - Reykjavic Iceland

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Welcome to Iceland. We arrived about 7:00 this morning as the ship pulled into Reykjavik Harbor and the harbor pilot came aboard to guide us to the dock. David had gotten up early to try for some scenic pictures arriving in Iceland, but it just wasn't happening. To start with it was heavily overcast rather than bright and sunny. Second is that Reykjavik is the major seaport in Iceland, and our arrival looked like most any other seaport. But we are here after 5 days at sea.

The temperature today got up to 50 degrees, but with a mild breeze and occasional drizzle. Although it had been light outside our window for much of the night, it just wasn't the best of days weatherwise.

We went to the dining room for breakfast, and it wasn't very crowded. Many of the passengers headed for the gangways either for morning excursions or to maximize their free time in town. We had a nice breakfast but nothing really special.

We usually book morning excursions but today we had an afternoon trip arranged. We spent some time in the lounges with very few other people around. David went ashore to see if there were shops at the pierside and where we would need to go to catch the bus. Nothing special to report, so he came pretty quickly. Since they had the two main doors open for disembarking passengers, it got pretty cool in the piazza pretty quickly. So we made our way back to the cabin to take it easy the rest of the morning.

About noon we went to the Horizon Court for a light lunch before going to our excursion point. We got the same head start as in Halifax for going to the bus. But there were several other folks who also used walkers and scooters on this trip. Anyway, we still got a front row for our tour called "Easy Reykjavik". This was a drive around town seeing sights and hearing information, but not involving a lot of other walking.

Reykjavic is in the southwest corner of Iceland and about 60% of all the country's population lives here. The island was founded by Vikings in about the year 984. The original population was about 2500 people, but it didn't grow much over the next 800 years. The volcanic heat kept the island reasonably comfortable and the main focus was on agricuture. The growth rally started. Around 1900 the population started growing with a lot of new people moving to Iceland. In 1944 Iceland declared its independence from Denmark. Now there are about 300K residents and about 500K sheep. The Icelandic wool is highly regarded for making sweaters and such. The main industries though are fishing and tourism. They are expecting about 2M tourists to visit Iceland this year.

Our bus drove us around the town and to various points of interest. We visited the President's House, which had been the home of all 6 presidents since 1918. However we stayed a little longer than planned. Our bus broke and we were stuck there for half an hour until they could send a replacement. But eventually we got back on the road and returned to seeing places.

We drove through multiple lava fields where they have been constructing new buildings. There is a strong belief here than Elves live in the rocks and and that lava is their favorite kind of rock. There have been occasions when they were building roads and they moved some large lava blocks out of the way. Subsequently that location would be the seen of multiple accidents. Now they reroute new roads around large lava blocks to keep the elves happy.

We saw the largest church in Iceland - a Lutheran cathedral. We can't come up with the name right now, but it was pretty impressive. We saw the building where Reagon and Gorbachov had their famous nuclear arms treaty meeting. We also drove past the College of Iceland. Their 3 original pillars were theology, medicine, and law. Now there are many different other fields of study, including majoring in studying elves. No telling what kind of job that produces. We saw their symphony hall which is a large building with the outside all glass. That is distinctive since so many of the building seem to be made from cement. That being said though, all the places we saw were in good condition and kept nice and clean. There were tulips & daffodils blooming around the town.

Our guide appeared to be on about her first tour. She mostly read things from a book of scripts, and she sometimes had trouble thinking of the English words. Our driver actually seemed to know more about the tour than the guide, but he only coached her in Icelandic. Anyway, we got back to the ship about 4:15 and to our cabin about 4:30. It was an interesting afternoon.

At dinner three of our tablemates had been on other excursions. One went to the Blue Lagoon when the water is heated by geothermal vents and the people went swimming in the lagoon. The other couple went to one of the places where the steam comes out of the ground and is converted into heat for the city and produces much of the electricity for Iceland. So there is a lot of different things to see in Iceland.

This was Italian night in the restaurant. We had the special penne pasta cooked by the Head Waiter, and it was delicious. Janet had it as her entree while David only had it as a sampling. David had the breaded chicken breast for his main course. We always enjoy Italian Night in the restaurant.

Now we are back in the cabin resting from our day's activity. Janet is watching Toy Story 4 and stitching while David finishes a book. Although David took some pictures, it will take a little while to get some posted in the blog. Tomorrow we will be at a different location in Iceland, but it will require using a Ship's Tender to get to shore since we won't actually dock. That is more than we want to undertake so we don't have a formal excursion scheduled. We will see what happens. Good night.

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