Our third day was relaxing and spent around our neighborhood. After breakfast, we ventured up to the landmark church. It’s at the high point of the city and affords some wonderful views. It’s relatively new in a typical clean Scandinavian / Gothic style. Great views from the tower!
Lunch was a great noodle soup from the local soup place. Really good and spicy. Then we went off on another walk, this time to the Iceland National Museum. I think the best part was the brisk and beautiful walk through great neighboorhoods and through a beautiful park. Stopping at a local cafe for hot chocolate was a highlight.
I can’t help but note that Reykjavic is a great city. It’s clean beyond belief and the people are so friendly. English is spoken everywhere and much of the signage is in English so it’s hard to have any difficulty with communication. Their money is funny though. 1,000kr = about $8 so we always seem to be dealing with huge numbers. The food is really good. Our evening meal tonight was really special. Diane had rack of lamb to die for and I had the fish of the day, a local white fish that was so flavorful. They do eat well here.
And the young people are everywhere! It’s a very vibrant, young city and the women are blonde, tall and georgous. A wonderful place indeed!
Sunday was get away day to London and we had an early rise. We needed to meet the bus down the block from our apartment at 4:30am! Turns out, we needn’t have set the alarm. The city was crawling with young people bar hopping and making quite a racket all night. As we waited for our bus, there were hundreds of kids moving up and down the blocks, in and out of bars and generally going wild! What a scene! And this was at 5am! The bars were going strong. The police pulled over a car and arrested the driver and passenger while we waited. Crazy! Turns out this is a quiet reserved town all week and then all hell breaks out on the weekend.
The flight to London was uneventful. At least it was uneventful until we hit Scotland when the clouds parted and we had horizon to horizon sunshine which lasted all day; unsual for this part of the world. Well, I had my window seat so I was in my glory! Northern Scotland was a snow covered, mountainous, barren wasteland, but suddenly the snow disappeared and we had beautiful, green countryside.
Later, as we approached Heathrow, the pilot gave us a treat:
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| That tall building is the Shard and Tower Bridge is upper left |
London was beautifully sunny but cold and we didn’t get much more done than getting settled in our apartment. But the apartment is awesome! A penthouse with great views!
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| View from our balcony. That’s the London Eye. |
Tomorrow we begin our London tour with the Armistice Day commemoration in Tralfagar Square and then off to the Eye!