Sleepwalking through Reykjavík

Grammy's Comments:

We started our trip on Thursday with a 3:45 pm flight to Boston. Once there, we found a Legal Sea Foods and enjoyed a leisurely dinner. It was a good thing, too, because it turned out our 8:45 5-hour flight to Reykjavik on Icelandic Air didn’t serve any food…not even peanuts! Since we weren’t bothered with staying awake for a meal, we tried to make the most of our sleep opportunity. We each got an hour or two and then staggered off the plane at what they claimed was 5:45 am on Friday. We had pre-purchased a bus transfer to the BSI station—about a 45-minute ride. We enjoyed checking out the windswept landscape and noticing all the interesting differences from the US in houses and other buildings, cars, and vegetation.

Once at the bus station, we got a coffee to try to get our brain cells working and then managed to figure out how to store our luggage in lockers for the day. Then we walked up a major hill to one of the icons of Reykjavik, Hallgrimskirkja Lutheran Church. It was finished in the 1980’s and looks a bit like a concrete space shuttle to me. It’s visible from many spots in the city and has a huge crowd-funded organ. There’s an elevator that takes you up 6 stories in the tower to a great outlook on the city. The weather cooperated, so we had some wonderful views of the colorful roofs and a nice view of the city. We also admired the large statue of Leif Erikson in front of the church—very photogenic!

We took a short walk following our noses to the fabulous smell of fresh-baked bread in Braud & Co. where Johnny and I had caramel-filled croissant pastries to die for and Abba enjoyed a fresh-baked regular croissant. We ate our treats on a bench outside the shop and began to feel like we might live! We got all the way to the main shopping street and site of our Air B&B, Laugavegur, walked almost the entire length, and then tuned off into a windy path to the National Museum of Iceland. We were all so tired by then that much of the museum was lost on us, but we enjoyed what we could of the history of Iceland and rested in the museum café. At that point, the idea of making almost the entire circle again to reclaim our bags and get to our B&B was too much to contemplate, so we made our way to the bus station, got our bags, and took a taxi to the shopping street. It was still too early for check-in, so we had lunch at a cute little place called Mezze (pizza for Abba and me, avocado hummus toast and salad for Johnny). We visited the Icelandic Phallological Museum recommended by Johnny’s friend Josh and Rick Steves. Words can’t adequately describe what we saw there and we certainly don’t plan to post any photos of it, so look it up for yourself!

Finally it was time to check in to the apartment which unfortunately was a third floor walk-up. Once there, we all collapsed for a much needed 1-hour nap, got up and showered to become humans again, and walked to dinner at Messinn, a good fish place. We had a great first dinner to celebrate our adventures. Johnny and I shared a delicious giant prawn appetizer with a lime aioli and arctic char made pan-style served in a sizzling pan with potatoes, almonds, honey, butter, and salad on top—amazing! Abba got a cream of lobster soup with cognac and a pan-style redfish made with a chili lime cream sauce. We waddled back to the apartment and are trying to stay awake until a decent bedtime so we might sleep all night. Tomorrow is our Golden Circle tour and we want to be awake for it! All in all a great start to the trip.

P.S. We'll post photos as soon as we can figure out how to do it. In the meantime, we're posting a few on Instagram and Facebook.

Abba’s Comments:

I never heard of an airline not providing a crumb of food on a five-hour international flight. If we come to Iceland again, we’ll see if WOW airlines is a little more customer-friendly than Icelandic. Also, it’s worth noting that the prices of everything here are completely ridiculous. Calling Reykjavik Europe’s most expensive city, which Rick Steves does, is entirely justified. It’s fun to walk around though, and the view from the church tower is magnificent.

What we wanted to do more than anything once we got to Reykjavik at around 8 am was go to the Air B&B we’re staying at and take a nap, but we couldn’t check in until 3 pm, so most of what Rebecca just described was done by the three of us in a pretty much zombified state. We still enjoyed it, but by the time we got to the museum a lot of vacant staring and putting heads down on café tables was going on. The 90-minute nap we allowed ourselves once we finally got into the apartment (one bedroom and a living room/guest room combination plus a kitchen) restored us to life, and we really enjoyed dinner.

There actually are words to describe the Phallological Museum, but inserting them in a family blog makes pretty stiff demands on us, so we’ll just withdraw and let you follow Rebecca’s suggestion to look it up for yourself.Read more