Our Final Day In Reykjavik

 Because we wanted a full extra day in the city to see everything, we had tacked on an extra day to our package deal with Nordic Visitor!  And of course we wanted to leave plenty of time for shopping!

We had a nice breakfast and had plans to go to the Perlan Museum - I had read great things about this place and even though it was expensive, I knew we had to go!  Because of the road conditions, we had no choice but to hire a taxi - we had originally planned to walk because it was only a mile but there was no way with all the snowdrifts!

The front desk called a taxi for us and he soon arrived and took us there - yes, the streets were a mess!

Perlan was AWESOME!!  It's a huge round place with so much to see - and many shows with special effects which included a lava show and a special movie that made you feel like you were right there at the edge of a volcano, watching it flow!  A new show will start soon so we got to see the preview of going down inside of a volcano - it was excellent!

They had an ice cave you could walk in and through - we enjoyed some pic taking there!

Then it was up the steps to the top floor - WOW - check out the ceiling!

There were windows all the way around this top floor - and a cafe and a restaurant!!  Naturally we had to have special coffee and a blueberry cream cheese muffin - so good!

As I said, the place is very large and what a building it is!

They have an outdoor area where you can circle around the entire museum - the views were outstanding!!

When we were finished at Perlan, we asked the front people to call us a taxi - the lady said she would call but the last person who requested one waited an hour and still no taxi so she walked to the bus stop!  Gosh, we really didn't want to have to walk to the bus stop so we decided to wait a little bit - soon a taxi pulled up with people in it so we raced out and once they got out, the taxi was free!  There was another couple waiting there for a taxi too and they asked if they could share it with us - sure no problem!

We stopped back at the hotel to regroup and then headed out - our late lunch was to be an Icelandic hot dog which everyone raves about!!  We walked to where the directions took us but still couldn't find the hot dog stand so just walked up by the church as we knew there was one by there - oh my gosh, the hot dog was amazing - some type of special sauce was on it along with onions and ketchup and mustard - it was delicious!

We FINALLY found Rainbow Street (which is painted in different colors) but because of all the snow, it was completely covered - oh well.......

Next up was shopping!  We had walked by this place a couple of times so took a picture of it - pretty wild looking!

It was fun to look in some of the shops for our souvenirs - we both knew exactly what we wanted!!  

I was originally looking for a round ball type ornament of the northern lights but most of them were fancy painted ones that started about $40 - I wasn't willing to pay that and in one store, found the flat glass type one and it was perfect!

We had a fun afternoon looking around and finally got back to the hotel - we decided to walk to a "Food Hall" which is a large building with several small places to grab food and lots of tables to eat at!  It was cold and icy out so we were glad we had our crampons!

Pizza sounded good so that's what we got - black crust pizza is very popular in Iceland - not sure if ours was that or not but it DID have black on the crust - we were hungry and ate the whole thing!

My crampons didn't always stay on well - it came off walking home and Patty noticed it as she was behind me - I leaned against a building and got it back on, only to realize on our hotel street that it was off again - Patty insisted on backtracking to where I put it last on so we did but still didn't find it!

Once we got in the little entry area of the hotel, we had to take the crampons off and when I went to take the one off I realized there were TWO on the same foot - OH MY GOSH!!!  We started laughing and couldn't stop!!

That night we REALLY bundled up to walk close to the sea to watch for the northern lights once again - we had scouted out the route while it was light but the parking lot we were going to stand in was just too bright so we ended up walking right by the ocean.  We were thrilled to see the Peace Column was lit up.

This light is a memorial to John Lennon of the Beatles from his widow, Yoko Ono  - it's a tall tower of light that is projected from a white stone monument that has the words "Imagine Peace" carved into it in 24 languages.  It was neat to see!

This is what we looked like completely bundled up - I had hand warmers in my gloves as we waited there about 45 minutes!  There were a few lines of light green that Patty could see with her camera but nothing worth taking pictures of - we finally just headed back to the hotel room!

One last breakfast at the hotel, a light lunch on the corner and then it was time for our driver to take us to the airport - we had gotten emails the night before that our seats were no more as they were looking for volunteers to take another flight, due to the cancellation of so many flights the day before.  The airport was busy (it's a smaller airport that really needs an expansion) but the line went quickly and we got seats - not together of course - Patty got an aisle seat (my favorite) and I got a middle seat - which I wasn't too happy about for an 8 hour flight!

When we finally loaded and I got to my seat (at least I was in row 13), I discovered it was an exit seat so LOTS of leg room - and the man sitting by the window asked if he could sit in the middle by his wife if I was interested in the window seat!!  YES YES YES!!!!!!  So the flight was not bad at all - we had ordered dinner in advance and it was OK - and I even slept a little bit on the plane!

Of course when we landed in Denver, we had to switch times for 6 hours earlier!!  We caught our shuttle and got to the hotel - unpacked enough to get a good nights' sleep and both of us slept well!  Patty had a 6:30 shuttle back to the airport to fly to Omaha - I headed to Jessi's for coffee and an adjustment before I headed home!

The Iceland trip exceeded my expectations - I had no idea how beautiful Iceland is and I can see why it is the "going" place for vacations!  The people were so friendly and polite (and most spoke English) and we had no bad experiences anyplace we went - it truly is a wonderful place to visit!