REYKJAVIK

We spent our last day in Reykjavik. Terry had a guidebook with a walking tour. But the directions were so confusing--and the people we asked for help only made matters worse, though they were very nice about it--that we quickly abandoned our plan and winged it.

Two churches dominate the view.
We explored City Hall, where we discovered a lovely diorama of the entire island. We retraced our steps over the last several days. Much more vivid than on a map. Try as I might, I couldn't get a good picture of the diorama, although I did manage to get a panoramic view of the city from across a lake that divides it.

Terry talks marketing with a friend.
We headed to the Iceland Museum of Natural History. On the way, Terry sat down on a park bench and struck up a conversation with a new acquaintance. Since he was a man of few words, their talk was a bit one-sided.

Fairweather ducks...
We also encountered  outgoing ducks, who posed happily but then cooled toward us when we didn't offer them anything to eat.

Oops, I lopped off the top of the church.
No visit to Reykjavik would be complete without stopping at the Hallgrimskirka or Hallgrimur's Church. It's the most prominent landmark. Iceland is a Lutheran country, and this church was designed with the basalt lava flows in mind. It was commissioned in 1937. Construction began in 1945, and the building was complete in 1974. A statue of Leif Ericson (you were expecting maybe Vasco da Gama?) stands in front of the church.

Stark but beautiful.
The interior is done in flying-buttress style but without the ornamentation of earlier European churches. Simple, plainspoken, and yet awe-inspiring, like the country itself.

We took the elevator to the observation deck at the top of the steeple and looked out over the city. You could see everything from up there, and I was missing Iceland already.






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