At the time, we had stayed at the Center Hotels chain in Reykjavik. We had done some promotional work for them, and as a result, the sister of the owner of the chain started reading this blog.
She commented every now and then, and Ruth stayed in touch with her on facebook. And the other day, Ruth contacted her to let her know we were going to be in town for a short time, and we made arrangements to get together.
So, Ólöf picked us up at the cruise ship terminal at 9:30am and we went for a drive to the Reykjavik Botanical Garden.
The day started off quite nice.
The famous Catholic church still dominates the skyline.
But we do notice a lot more taller buildings that weren't here 13 years ago!
Lots of pretty park space in the gardens, and it's free to go in and walk around.
Pretty flowers.
The pond.
Geese.
There is a small cafe at the botanical gardens, so we went and each had a hot chocolate.
Ruth, Kevin, and Ólöf.
It's always interesting to get the perspective of a local when we visit different countries. Iceland has always been considered an expensive country when compared to others around the world, but even Ólöf thinks it has become expensive. For perspective, our three hot chocolates cost 2400 ISK ($26.85 CAD, $19.50 USD).
A liter of gasoline costs 325 ISK ($3.64 CAD). That's the equivalent of $9.95 USD per gallon. Yikes. You definitely don't want to have a thirsty vehicle here!
Ólöf drove us downtown where we said goodbye. We will make it back to Iceland again some time. We really want to do some motorhome travel here for a month or two. It will be an expensive trip, but so worthwhile!
An example of the type of house the original settlers lived in.
Nice mural.
Scenery along the way.
Ruth, with a funny statue along the path.
We walked up to the top of the hill for a view.
At the top of the hill is "The Pearl".
The Pearl is the Museum of Natural History and there are quite a few different exhibits. When we were here in 2012, you could go up to the observation deck for free. But no more... now, the observation deck is part of the general admission ticket. Currently 6,300 ISK ($70.40 CAD, $51.00 USD) per person.
But, we still got some nice views looking back at the city.
Next, we walked over to the big Catholic Church...
It's got some renovation work going on.
Lots of tourists having a look.
The interior of the church is actually quite plain, but the organ is impressive.
They have just finished their Pride week here in Reykjavik and there are lots of left overs.
Lots of interesting architecture.
Reykjavik City Hall.
Local older homes.
Reykjavik has a small lake located right in the middle of town.
In the city hall, they have this huge relief map of Iceland. Very cool.
Another mural.
There was a Windstar cruise ship in port.
They are very pricey... upwards of $5,000 USD for a 7 day cruise.
Harpa is their concert hall and theater.
These apartments weren't there in 2012.
But this was.
We went into a grocery store to check some prices...
A box of Cheerios... $10.50 CAD, $7.65 USD.
A dozen eggs... $10.05 CAD, $7.29 USD.
A (not very nice looking) head of lettuce... $4.80 CAD, $3.50 USD.
Ruth in a tourist trinket shop.
Polar bears are not native to Iceland, however they sometimes arrive on ice flows from Greenland. Unfortunately, they are deemed too dangerous to stay, and are killed.
Interesting building!
I wanted to have an Icelandic beer, but the prices in pubs are quite high. So we found an official Icelandic government run liquor store, where I asked the cashier what the most popular beer is with the locals. He said it used to be Viking beer, but now it is Gull beer. So I bought one can of Gull beer.
And we smuggled it on board. Technically against the rules, however we figured that worse case scenario they would simply say it wasn't allowed and I would stand there and drink it before getting on board. However, our bag went through the scanner and no bells or whistles went off, so we were fine.
It wasn't as good as the Greenland beer I had the other day. It was very drinkable, but just another commercial beer.
Scenery as the ship departed Reykjavik.
Reykjavik skyline.
So, goodbye to Reykjavik. This morning we are waking up in the town of Grundarfjörður and are heading off to do some waterfall hiking!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nice deal on this 14" HP Laptop.
And in Canada...
No comments:
Post a Comment
There are more comments on our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TravelwithKevinAndRuth