ICELAND: COME FOR THE MYSTERY, RETURN FOR THE MAGIC

I have a confession to make. It’s up there on the Richter Scale of seismic activity, so you may want to abandon your computer and run for the outdoors where you’ll be safer.  
  
Okay, for those of you still at your computer, you can obviously handle the fallout, so here goes! Visiting Iceland was not at the top of my bucket list.  In fact, it wasn’t even on my  bucket list.  It was on my sister Lynda’s bucket list. 

I’m a fraud!  I think the minimum sentence for fraud is 2 years. Is hope I can get home confinement.

The truth is (I can deliver that, I promise) Lynda outranks me (damn that birth order thing!), which means I usually acquiesce when it comes to any familial decision making.  When we considered  travel destinations the four of us could agree on (Rod and Lynda, me and Jim), our Canadian Rockies bid lost to their Iceland option. 

Here we are doing easy time in Iceland. Just have to move this pile of rocks 2 feet to the left.

I was not only out ranked in our travel options; I was out classed big time.  So let the record stand: my big sister, as usual, deserves the credit for my love affair with Iceland!  She’s always been one step ahead of me (actually 2 years) my entire life!  It’s both a curse and a blessing! When do I ever get to be right?  She's not the boss of me!  

Oops!!! I got a little carried away with the sibling rivalry thing.  Won’t happen again; at least not until the next joint venture.   

At this point in my blog it's obvious I can’t get enough of Iceland.   I certainly didn’t get to see enough of Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik.   We barely scratched the surface of this beautiful culturally and politically diverse harbor town. But then again, neither did the early settlers trying to eke out a living on the hostile terrain of this isolated island.  We missed the museums, the galleries, and the festivals. 

Hostile living conditions, huh? Who are they kidding?

There's no missing Iceland's Sun Voyager sculpture that sits on the banks of Reykjavik's beautiful harbor in honor of the early Vikings that made their way here.

We briefly wandered through the quaint and colorful historic district like lost sheep. There are thousands of those running around Iceland, three times more than there are people.

If these streets look like Euope, you'd be right. Iceland is actually the most western portion of Europe.

For obvious reasons, Reykjavik’s landmark Hallgrim’s Church captured our attention.  It was named after Iceland’s foremost hymn writer,  Hallgrimur Petursson, a 17th century poet and ecclesiastical scholar. 

Is it a basalt lava formation or a space ship?

Here's the real deal when it comes to basalt lava formations. 

Twenty-first century version of Blue Boy, my hubby Jimmy.

The modern-meets-Gothic lines of the more traditional interior are reminiscent of Iceland’s ice
formations while the clean vault lines give viewers a sense of an ice cave.  This church is truly a testament to Iceland’s natural resources and architectural genius.

Don't you think this looks a bit like Batman's Bat Cave with 12 ft. ceilings?

Entrance to the church was free, but we paid a small fee to access the bell tower, where views of the city went on and on in every direction. 

Now you know why I've been saying Iceland is so colorful!

From our vantage point, we could even see Perlan (the Pearl), the geothermal plant outside Reykjavik in Oskjuhlio Hills.  A revolving restaurant sits on top of 6 aluminum-sided water tanks housing 4 million liters of the city's water needs.

Wow, that must have been some oyster to spit out this "pearl."

The statue of Leifu (Leif) Eiriksson that sits directly in front of Hallgrim's Church was a gift from you and me (and a few billion other U.S. citizens) to Iceland back in 1930 (okay, that

would be a gift from our grandparents) to commemorate the 1000th  anniversary of Iceland’s parliament. Apparently the statue was also our tacit acknowledgment that good ole Eriksson beat Christopher Columbus to North American by about 500 years.  Picky, picky, picky!

It's a wide, wide wonderful world out there.  There's no question Iceland is very close to the top of my list of destinations and close to the top of our world!