Time Afoot

Dearest Rachel –

After finishing up my last letter to you about the city (granted, I didn’t dwell too much on the city, since you remember having been here – and, like I said, we didn’t spend too much time in Reykjavik proper), there wasn’t a whole lot for us to do at the time but watch as we pulled into port throughout the morning. We couldn’t see the port, however, despite being on the port side of the ship – that’s irony for you, but it happens some times. Hey, everyone needs to get a chance to see the port from their balcony now and again.

Since we weren’t able to see what was going on, we decided to leave the room, make for the opposite side of the ship, and look at what might be going on over on the port side (well, actually the starboard side, but this is no time for an Abbott and Costello routine). However, as we passed by the centrum on our way to the stairs – I’m still trying to be good about this, and take stairs rather than elevators…

…we realized there was a crowd of people hanging around to disembark and make their way into the city, too. When we arrived at the fourth deck, they were setting up a gangway, as well as the X-ray machine for returning guests to run their possessions through to make sure that no contraband was making its way aboard. So rather than watch the activity going on outside, we decided to join the crowd and see if we couldn’t just go ashore and be a part of what was going on outside.

Sure enough, it wasn’t all that long before the line was moving, and in only a few minutes after joining it, we were out the hatch and down the plank onto the dock. Compared to most of the crowd we’d encountered when we’d gotten down here, we hadn’t even been waiting all that long.

But that left the question of ‘how do we get into town?’ We hadn’t signed up for any transport, like we would get with a shore excursion, so we had to find our own way in; and unlike some (although to be fair, not most, by any means) cities, it wasn’t a matter of stepping off the ship and finding ourselves immediately in the middle of downtown. Fortunately, as I’d read about in the daily newsletter we received from the cruise ship, there was a shuttle that ran from our pier to what they described as the ‘city center’ – the Harpa Concert Hall – although, as I observed in the moment, it seems odd to consider such a place as the city center, when half of the directions you could go would end you up in the bay that the city was built around.

Still, we made our way along the main road (Geirsgata) within sight of the shoreline until the sidewalk was blocked by construction, at which point we turned inland onto what I think might have been Ægisgata – the map we were given at the customs house, while detailed enough in terms of naming roads, didn’t identify many landmarks (and in some places, street signs weren’t particularly plentiful), so it wasn’t always clear as to where we were at a given time. It didn’t help that the names themselves were so unwieldy as to escape my memory literally the moment I would put the map down. Really, the only way I can actually manage to remember the street we turned onto is because Google Maps indicates a mural on that street which I happened to take a picture of (among many others; Reykjavik is crowded with murals, for such a small city):

I should mention that we weren’t planning to – and didn’t – do a lot of shopping here. Prices are a little daunting here, thanks to the krona being less than a penny, so they look ridiculously large. But even when translating them into dollars, things aren’t particularly cheap; a magnet we bought for Kris (as she’s the only person who asked for something, so we actually know what to look for here) was just shy of ten dollars. On the other hand, we found a pair of swim trunks for Daniel (he hadn’t thought to pack any, but he could stand to use the hot tub now and again) for under twenty dollars, so there’s that. Hey, they were even in his favorite color, although he has to live with the addition of a red and white stripe on them, since it’s basically emulating the Icelandic flag.

Apart from that, this was just a walking tour without much in the way of context. At some point, we found a street painted in rainbow colors, with storefronts on either side, leading up to the Hallgrimskirkja, the landmark church in the center of the city – as well as one of the tallest buildings in the country. I’d make a snarky comment about the tourism trade being the real deity between the two landmarks, but on its website, the church itself claims to be growing and thriving (it isn’t an ancient cathedral, long abandoned from its intended purpose, after all), so who am I to judge?

Indeed, I’ll leave my judgment for our lunch. I probably could have gone the day without, as I usually do (although by the time we were putting in the last of some eighteen thousand steps in making our way back to the ship, I was more than glad for the extra fuel), but Daniel suggested that we look for some place to eat, if for no other reason than that we ought to try something local while we were here. After at least one false start, we settled for returning to the square with the mural depicting the polar bear appearing to fight the puffin.

We hadn’t necessarily intended to stay out for the entire time that the shuttles were running (between 12:30 and 6 p.m.), but between covering the ground that we did, and deciding to return on foot, it was after 5 when we got back. Quite the strenuous day, to be honest, and today is likely to be likewise; it always is when we’re ashore, it seems. So with that being said, I hope that you’ll keep an eye on us, honey, and wish us luck, as we’re probably going to need it.