A Rather Pedestrian, and again wet, Day 8.

Today was our "down" day in the city, to wander and explore. Which we did! With the bad weather luck that's followed us so far - another day we chose to be largely out-of-doors that turned out to be very windy and rainy.

The morning was not bad at all. We slept in, had breakfast late, cleaned ourselves up, and wandered two streets up to Laugavegur, "the washing street" (translated literally) or "the shopping street" according to guidebooks for us tourists. Full of shops and fancier restaurants, probably overpriced but interesting to look at. We wandered, Adam taking a few snaps, towards the town hall and it's reknown duck pond. When the first little weather tantrum began to spit at us, we ducked into another Kaffitar and shared a quiche while the weather blew by. It seemed it might be lightening up again, so we headed for the pond, only to find the rain pick up. Adam ducked into a bank vestibule to put contacts in, and of course that prompted a break in the weather that allowed us at least to get uphill to an interesting stop we wanted to try - Hallgrimskjirkja, which we stopped at on our first day in town but only after it had closed. Today it was open, and we paid our fare and ascended to the tower from which one can see over all of Reykjavik and most of the surrounding areas, to ocean and mountains beyond. The weather was still worsening, and when we got up to the open part of the tower, the wind was pretty impressive. We took photos from all 4 sides, and stayed through the 3 pm bells which were just over our heads, then headed down to the much less biting weather on the ground (in the church, too). The building was interesting - much less ornamented than famous continental churches one might think of, with all their frescoes and stained glass, but in an elegant, minimalist sort of way. There ARE a few stained glass pieces, but most of the windows are clear, and the vault is just white stone, with simply finished wooden ends on the pews and a few ornamental sculptures around. By far the showpiece of the place is the pipe organ, with over 5200 pipes (plus a few dozen on its "little brother" that sits up near the front). We left around 3:30, as the hall was closing for a recording session with a choir. Adam chatted briefly with someone we presume is the engineer as he was setting up microphones and his Macs to do the recording.

Outside, we crossed the church courtyard and the road in front to Kaffi Loki, a local spot well known enough to have made it to the tourist guides and the Air Iceland "things to do in Iceland" video I watched on the plane. It is a funky, trendy-looking coffeeshop bragging of a traditional Icelanding menu, which indeed includes the (in)famous fermented shark, served here with dried fish and a shot of "black death", the only alcoholic beverage that seems to be made in the country - Icelandic Schnapps. I think with the bite of whale steak and a taste of dried fish earlier in the week, I've decided I've gone native enough, and I'm not brave enough to try rotted shark with a shot, so we stuck to a "pancake plate", a sweet snack with our coffees consisting of crepes with sugar and with jam and whipped cream. Much more tourist-friendly fare.

From there, we made the... ah, misjudgment, weather-wise, to decide to walk to our next destination, Perlan or "The Pearl", a facility boasting a viewing deck, fancy restaurant, less fancy cafeteria, visitor centre, shops and Saga Museum. Two things went unfortunately wrong about this. The weather decided to get worse again just after we started, and we wound up walking uphill against a driving rain to get there. The second thing was that when reading the hours, I neglected to note the second listing of WINTER hours, and we arrived a few minutes after the museum closed. We went up to the viewing deck but the wind and rain was keeping everyone inside, so we looked around, had a seat, and tried to figure out the bus routes to get back. It was quite a hike out of the park just to get to the bus, so we were damp again by the time we got there. The driver almost missed seeing us so we had to run to catch him up as he stopped at the next intersection.

I'd decided from there that a hot pot would be a nice respite so we bussed to a depot and then transferred to the route that went to the Laugardalslaug, reputedly the largest facility in the city and one supposedly with lots of outdoor hot pool space. This turned out to be not quite true just now - it appears that much of the hot pool part is under construction/renovation just now. So, we did relax and soak a bit, in an indoor and outdoor hot pool, but the facility was crowded. It generally looks to be the sports centre for the serious teams, so lots of kids/teens were around really practicing, and the younger kids and older folks were in the hot pool. Luckily the bus stop to get home was not nearly so far as the one from the Pearl, and we were a quick ride and a couple blocks walk from the hotel. We returned to find a sign indicating the northern lights trips WERE running tonight, though we have no idea where they might go to, plus, the company we had a free re-run with had already left and the later tour was a different operator. I don't think we were up for that anyway tonight, as the damp was soaking in again. We dried off, changed clothes, and headed back to the bar, where they serve a soup-and-bread dinner from 5-10. A slightly peppered carrot soup and half a loaf of french bread has done much to set things right. Tomorrow will be another early day as we have our last full day in the country and are spending it with Knitting Iceland on the Woollen West tour up north-west of the city, though I'm not sure how far we go or what exactly we see.. there's a goat farm mentioned, but all destinations are subject to availability. Will update you tomorrow on how that went!