Reykjavik

Dearest Rachel –

It sort of ties our last port of call with the one we’re arriving at; even when we last visited the place, some twelve years ago, we couldn’t think of this city’s name without recalling Glasgow native Craig Ferguson during his Late Late Show days. About a year or so into his tenure, he began to open every single interview with his guest with the apparent setup line of “Iceland is in the North Atlantic; its capital city is Reykjavik,” and then, with no warning or other preamble, he would begin asking questions that had nothing to do with Iceland or Reykjavik (but which were more conventionally pertinent to his guest’s career or current projects). It was a non-sequitur that quickly became a running joke, and any mention of the land, let alone the city continues to conjure up his opening line is our minds, despite his having left the show (and its subsequent decline over several years under James Corden; which we didn’t bother to pay attention to).

The point is, when you combine this running joke with the fact that we already visited this port together, it’s another case of not really wanting to deal with researching the place and writing about it. But given that yesterday was a quiet day of hanging about the cabin together over a sea day – until Daniel fires up his weekly program, at which point I decamped to the lounge upstairs – there’s not all that much to write about. At the same time, I had little more to do at the moment but write you; and in any event, I needed to make sure to maintain my streak.

When we first came here twelve years ago, I was comparing Reykjavik’s population to that of Rockford; at the time, I was under the impression that both of them were around 200 thousand people, so I considered it an appropriate comparison for us to wrap our heads around the place. It so happens that it was – and is – reasonably accurate, but the two places happen to be both larger and smaller than that. The cities proper are 123 thousand (for Reykjavik) and 144 thousand (for Rockford), but the greater metropolitan areas include 217 and 337 thousand people, respectively. I’m not sure where the additional 214 thousand come from for the Rockford/Freeport/Rochelle area, though; sure, there are those two additional towns, but when we used to drive through the area on our way to your folks (or Anime Iowa), it seemed rather desolate, to be honest. Then again, the Golden Circle tour we took last time we were here had a lot in the way of wide open, empty spaces, too.

And this is the thing about revisiting places; sure, plenty of specific changes may have happened in the intervening years, but when you take in the general sweep of things, it’s been a relatively short time since then. For all that we’ve gotten older (or left the planet, as in your case), and the people within them change, cities and countries themselves stay pretty much the same. The buildings stand, the rivers flow, and apart from some real destruction like that which can be caused by the local volcanoes (which I think closed the Blue Lagoon site on that spit southwest of Reykjavik; in any event, there’s no shore excursion going there like there was back when we were here, only to the Sky Lagoon, closer to ‘downtown’), most of what we can see will be similar to what we saw last time.

Granted, we didn’t spend much of our time in the city proper, or even in the larger metropolitan area; our first day had us taking the Golden Circle route well outside of the city, and the next day (yes, it would seem that both of our trips up here involved – or will involve – an overnight stay here) had us visiting the Blue Lagoon, so any discussion about the city wasn’t particularly germane to what we actually got to see:

It still feels a little weird to include pictures from our last trip when going into details about our current one; research about a town is supposed to be for places where one hasn’t been, so one knows where to go to see the interesting stuff. Then again, since we haven’t really gotten into the city in any great detail, I probably still need to look into that before we pull into port shortly after noon today. On the other hand, I think I had some of the best times when I didn’t prepare myself too much for what to expect, so I have to admit to being a little torn about it all.

Indeed, for once, we don’t have a shore excursion on this, our first day in port – which is unusual for us when cruising. As a family, we’ve had a tendency to rely on the local experts as to where to go and what to see; this is just going to be a case of knocking about the city, and see what there is of any interest. Granted, the things that interest us might not be the cultural and historical stuff as much as how the locals spend their day – we might check out a Bónus just like we did the Tesco in Greenock, for instance. The natural wonders can be left for tomorrow, when we actually do have an excursion planned.

Until then, though, I’d appreciate it if you were to keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck. I’m sure we’re going to need it.