I have to apologize. I gave incorrect information about Iceland winning the gold medal at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium. Iceland didn’t win the medal - Canada did. However the Canadian team was made up of all Icelandic descent players except for one. I told you I couldn’t understand these people talking!

Today we decided to get down & dirty with Reykjavik. So we set out at about 8:00 am & made our way to the Harpa Opera house and took in the views of the harbour from the top floor. It was a whole whopping five stories high. It was kind of freaky inside. We both felt like we were off kilter somehow and had to hold onto the railings when we were looking around. Then we made our way to the downtown area and had coffee in the oldest pub (started in 1931) in Reykjavik. I don’t think it has been updated since then! From there we went to the “Star Wars”-like church (Hallgrímskirkja) and went inside to check it out. Not impressive. It was very minimalistic except for the pipe organ with over 5000 pipes. It’s apparently amazing to hear. We wandered around town (in circles) for a while until we decided to check out a sculpture of a Viking ship made of shiny steel (Solfar) on the seafront promenade. Solfar (Sun Voyager) may be one of Reykjavik’s most widely photographed attractions. By then we’d actually seen most of what there is to see in Reykjavik. Bear in mind that the population of the whole country is about 350,000 so the largest city isn’t that big. Plus it started to rain again. So we decided to get in the car and drive to the northern area of the Rekjanes Peninsula to finish that area off. We didn’t see too much - Kalfatjarnkirkja - a church built in 1893 that was the largest country church in Iceland with two floors that could seat all parishioners at once - all 150 of them! We went to Vikingheimar (Viking World) and saw a full-sized replica of a Viking longship (Islendingur) which crossed the Atlantic in 2000 to celebrate Leif Eriksson’s discovery of Vineland 1000 years ago. I’m not sure I would have crossed the Atlantic in it! Then we went to Gardskagi that has two lighthouses, one from 1897 and the other from 1994. After that we headed back to Reykjavik to enjoy happy hour. We hadn’t had lunch and we had to try an Icelandic hot dog at Baejarins Bethune Pylsur. We had heard so much about them and they are considered Iceland’s national dish. They are made from sheep mostly and come with a honey mustard, ketchup, raw onions, cooked, crispy onions and a remoulade sauce. We were not fans. When we first arrived and before we tried them, we joked about living on them because of the high prices of dining out. Glad we weren’t forced to do that!

Tomorrow we fly to Copenhagen early so it was another early night. Happy hour might have had something to do with that as well!

Fun (?) facts:

The Blue Lagoon is the premiere spa in Iceland and it costs a small fortune to swim in its waters. Little do people know that they are simmering in industrial waste. The Blue Lagoon got its start when a geothermal plant was built in the middle of a petrified lava flow. The water they pumped up from deep underground wasn’t pure enough to pipe into area homes. However, it was hot enough to heat other water. Once that was done, they simply dumped vast volumes of still-pretty-hot water into the nearby rocks. Locals discovered this as a secret spot for a memorable dip.

The ocean at Reykjavik used to be further into the city but it was shallow water near the shore so they filled in the shallow water so it was deep water near the shore. The infill was more than 500 feet wide.

Construction on the Harpa was stopped halfway through due to the economic crash of 2008. Politicians thought they shouldn’t be building such an opulent structure in the circumstances. Eventually it was completed.

There is lots of depression in Iceland due to the weather and the amount of light. At the winter solstice the sun comes up at noonish and sets a couple of hours later and at the summer solstice the sun comes up around 3:00am and sets at midnightish. Winter would definitely be depressing.

They say you can get to know an Icelander easily - you talk to them about the weather today, what it was like last week and what it’s going to be like next week. It’s their favourite subject.

We noticed that it really didn’t get dark at night this time of year. It’s more like twilight at night.

There is a museum (Hid Islenzka Redasafn) dedicated to the penis in Reykjavik. We didn’t go ;) but, apparently, there are about 300 mammals’ members on display in jars. There’s even a mans penis on display. Páll Aragon pledged his manhood to the museum upon his death.

The high temperature in summer is around 16 degrees C. That’s when Icelanders go to the beach and sip their pina coladas.

Iceland was originally under Denmark rule and when the Germans took over Denmark in 1944 Iceland voted to become independent.

A Dane cannot understand an Icelander and vice versa even though both languages descend from Nordic Viking language and Iceland was under Danish rule for centuries. Icelandic is a medieval language and retains much of the complex grammar that has dropped out of use in Europe. The pronunciation is baffling. For instance, fjall (mountain) is pronounced fyatl; afsakio (please) is pronounced afsakith. Luckily for us, most Icelanders speak English.

Icelanders love ice cream. They eat it all year round. We were a tad chilly and everywhere we looked someone had an ice cream.