scattered in the light: 101 Reykjavik

Last Saturday I returned from my journey around Iceland. I had this destination in my mind for years, so when I saw cheap tickets last year I simply couldn’t resist. And finally, after 8 months of waiting, thinking and planning, we made it. Our journey started in London where we spent a night at Luton Airport. I find this place as totally inconvenient. But sleeping at airports is generally uncomfortable.

We landed in Keflavik before 9 am, and 40 minutes later we arrived to the capital – Reykjavik. The funny thing happened at passport check – a lady in front of me asked the police officer if she could get a stamp in her passport. The guy was quite surprised and strictly said ‘NO’ ;)

The first thing we did in Reykjavik was check-in at the brand new hostel called ‘Bus Hostel’. Really nice and at the same time the cheapest place to stay in the city. We were tired, but we didn’t want to waste any minute, so after quick breakfast we started exploring Iceland.

A small dream - having a flat in one of these blocks, just because of the view below...

Iceland welcomed us with really nice, chilly weather. It was a bit windy, but good winter jacket did its job. Firstly we went to the harbour, where we could see a nice panorama of Esja mountain on the other side of bay. A lot (if we can use this expression in the capital with population of only 120 000) people were walking, cycling and roller-skating and I must say that view was beautiful around to enjoy those activities.

As you can see on the picture above we shot Sólfar - the most photographed object in Reykjavik. Made by Jón Gunnar Árnason, it reflects Sun Voyager - a dreamboat and an ode to the sun.

Harpa Reykjavik Concert Hall

After strolling around the coast, we turned to the city centre. Maybe it's not obviously clear from my photos, but Reykjavik reminds me a lot of Polish cities I know. It feels like home when you're walking on small, uncrowded streets and most of houses seem to be taken straightly from your hometown. Green grass and trees in yards, the same triangle roofs, usually in red or brown colour, big windows (I can't understand why majority of houses in England have tiny windows, people here always complain about lack of sun light!) with cats relaxing on window sills. And what I noticed about window sills - they all look like small art exhibitions! You can find there not only plants, but also all kinds of figurines, decorations and knick-knacks. All these things look really organized and beautiful, it's not a mess like in academic dorm due to lack of space. I wanted to take some pictures of those windows, but usually I was aware that someone was at home, so I decided not to disturb people's privacy with my camera. But if you go to Reykjavik some day, you should look closely at them.

Behaving like typical tourists we were trying to see all important places. It was easy, thanks to a size of the city and fact, that we were not in overcrowded metropolis.

I personally think that Alþingishúsið is the smallest parliament in the world. Now you can see only entrance, but in next posts I will show you excatly how it looks like. It's definetely smaller than typical tanement house in Poland. But after elections only 63 people are allowed to call themselves as members of parliament - and in Poland we have 460, more than enough.

In the front of Alþingi we saw a big rock, which turned out to be a sculpture by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, inspired by the mass protests on Austurvöllur square in front of the parliament in Reykjavík after the banking collapse in 2008. It made some controversy - Kjartan Magnússon from the Independence Party claimed that ‘The Black Cone’ was a symbol of violence, because among peaceful protestors there were also rioters who acted violently and injured police officers, so they didn't deserve to have a special monument. I checked that this rock was about to disappear at the end of Santiago Sierra’s exhibition at Reykjavik Art Museum in April 2012, but it's was still there 2 weeks ago, so I guess it's to heavy to be removed ;)

In the afternoon we decided to try famous hamburgers in Prikid, considered as the oldest pub in Reykjavik (I don't know if it's true). I ordered Blue Moon burger with blue cheese and guacamole and Peter tried more traditional one. Both were very good, but they could be a bit warmer. With addition of french fries we couldn't finish our portions and I felt sorry for that, because it was the most expensive burger in my life, 9 pounds for one ehhh ;)