Reykjavik on foot.

Steve Edwards
Aug 9, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Aug 10, 2024

Day 9

Dinner last night was in Alexandria once more. Greek mese platter to start which I thought was delicious but too many vine leaves for Steve. Then lamb for him and risotto for me followed by cherry cheesecake and guess what for me, yes cheese.

It’s now 8.15 am and we’ve had breakfast and are having a lovely Costa coffee on our balcony with a beautiful view of the countryside round Reykjavik. It’s sunny today but still not warm - around 11 degrees.

Today we are doing a Free Walking Tour of Reykjavik but it doesn’t start until 10.30. So we plan to leave the ship around 9.30 and take the free shuttle bus to the town and walk to the meeting point. With a Free Walking Tour you don’t pay anything up front, you just give what you think the tour is worth when you finish. We are looking forward to seeing what is supposed to be a beautiful city.

And yes it is really beautiful, in fact it’s possibly one of the most beautiful cities we have seen. Thank you also to Erin and Mark for introducing us to the Free Walking Tours. Ours today was excellent. Our guide, Hendrik was a young Icelander who was great fun and very knowledgeable. Our walk lasted 2 hours and we saw a considerable amount of Reykjavik and also heard more tales, legends and facts. For example the story of the first settler in Iceland who was a wealthy Viking war lord called Ingolfur Arnarson. He was sailing to Iceland when he hit a storm. He prayed to the gods for safety and threw 2 wooden pillars from his ship into the sea saying that if they made it safely through the storm he would settle wherever the gods decided to send the pillars. The gods answered and they made it through the storm. When they landed Ingolfur sent two slaves to find the pillars. It took 2 years but they finally found them in what is now Reykjavik so Ingolfur settled there in 874. Since then Reykjavik has never itself suffered a natural disaster, despite everything that has happened in Iceland. So it is believed that Reykjavik is protected by the gods.

We also learnt more about Icelandic architecture. The buildings were all traditionally made of wood and clad with corrugated iron for protection against the harsh weather conditions. However in 1915 there was a huge fire in Reykjavik, so, many new regulations were introduced and there are now more buildings constructed from concrete. But away from Reykjavik the majority are still built of wood in the old tradition, particularly the summer cabins, of which there are hundreds all over the island as we saw yesterday.

Before our guided walk we walked around the harbour area where our shuttle bus dropped us. Right by the harbour is the wonderful Harpa Concert Hall. It was started in 2008 but the financial crash halted its completion until 2011. It is extremely beautiful. There are guided tours around it but we didn’t have time. We did see the small train that transported the materials for constructing the harbour in the early 20th century.

After the walk we went up the Main Street to the Hallgrimskirkja, the main church which was built between 1945 and 1986 and overlooks the whole of the city. It is a very impressive modern design.

There was also a little retail therapy - gloves for Steve and angora socks for me as well as a new rucksack for me (I chose the wrong one at home and it died in Scotland) - not as cheap as decathlon but it is Icelandic and it is lovely 😂 - AND, not just an Icelandic sweater BUT an Icelandic hoodie. So happy.