Day 24 - Exploring Reykjavik

I was up early, like 6:00am, to drive into Reykjavik to return the hire car first thing. This meant taking the tunnel under the bay again because the scenic route would have added at least 40 minutes to the drive. Once in Reykjavik I wanted to drop my bags at the hostel where I would be staying tonight since the car hire place was way on the other side of town and I didn’t want to have to lug it from there.


I had time to scoff a hostel breakfast before dropping off the car. Just as I reached the drop I remembered that I had to fill the fuel tank first and so ensued a scenic tour through half of Reykjavik to find a service station that was open at 8:00am on a Saturday morning. I never realised it would be so hard, but maybe I was just looking in the wrong part of town. The AVIS women very kindly cancelled the extra days hire their computer tried to charge me for being two minutes late returning the car! I also had to prompt her to delete the cost of the insurance extras that I had declined. At least it turned out that they offered a shuttle service to my accommodation, so I needn’t really have worried about dropping my bags first. Incidentally, I racked up 1,495 kilometres in four days.

Hallgrimskirja Cathedral

Back at the hostel I got my bearings and then set off to explore what Reykjavik had to offer. Not many places were open yet, so I headed up to the famous Hallgrimskirja Cathedral for a look around. The exterior is certainly distinctive though the interior is correspondingly spartan. Except for the pipe organ which is huge, with over 5,000 pipes. I can also vouch for the fact that the church bells sound quite loud when you are up the top of the tower taking in the views of the city. Watch out for the lift doors when boarding though – they close quickly and painfully if you are not careful!

I strolled back to the centre of town, via the park that runs along Lake Tjornin, and checked out the local flea markets. No lizards, but I was able to buy a new spare pair of glasses, and a case for same, for a pretty good price. At the adjacent waterfront I read through the displays about Iceland’s three “Cod Wars” with the British fishing fleets in 1958, 1972 and 1975. There occurred as they extended their territorial waters to first 12, then 50 and finally 200 miles to control over fishing. No casualties but there were a few ship ramming incidents after Iceland coast guard ships cut the nets of British trawlers.

Next I started exploring Reykjavik’s new equivalent to the Sydney Opera House, an interesting glass panelled structure. While there I received an SMS from Laura about the Wallabies great win over the All Blacks to claim their first Tri Nations trophy in 10 years, so naturally I had to ring home to find out more about it. After lunch I took in the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, which is really more a Museum of (old) Photographs, but interesting none the less.

Corrugated iron anyone?

I had a coffee break before going for a walk to check out some examples of Reykjavik’s classic architecture – buildings made from driftwood and coated with corrugated iron. They can still look pretty ornate just the same. Though they’d surely want good insulation to stop the iron sucking all the heat out! Next stop was the Volcano Show, a documentary about some of Iceland’s volcanic eruptions in the last 60 years. It is amazing to see melted glacial waters rolling along boulders about the size of a small house. Unfortunately the following stroll along the main shopping drag failed to turn up any lizards.

And that was pretty much the end of the day’s activities, apart from treating myself to pan fried salmon for dinner.

Some people I told about my plans to come to Iceland responded “Why Iceland?”. Well I was talking to the Canadian chap on the AVIS shuttle with me this morning and he said he had come to Iceland with high expectation and they had been exceeded, so I am not the only one to be impressed by the natural wonders on offer here. I have seen maybe a quarter of the island and I think that I could have done with twice as much time just to do the travelling around and sightseeing. That is without getting involved in any of the bewildering array of activities on offer; which include horse riding, cycling, quad biking, caving, kayaking, white water rafting (hypothermia anyone?), surfing (I kid you not!), whale watching (not at the processing plants fortunately), ice climbing, hiking (glacier and regular) and snow mobiles. True, it is not the cheapest country to visit and car hire isn’t cheap either, but if any of you ever make the effort to come this far, do yourself a favour and given yourself at least 10 days. You won’t regret it.