Saturday night our Airbnb host was Iris. She told us she is part British, and was born during the "war". She is still quite spunky and active. She has fully lived life, and was a gymnast, dancer, hairdresser, artist, actress, and small hotel owner/operator in Sweden in her younger years. We stayed in a fairly small bedroom in her apartment in Reykavik. Below is a pic of the lights of Reykavik from her apartment balcony.
Saturday night we went into Reykavik and took in the town, which to us means walking down a couple of streets people watching and looking at the buildings. Reykavik is quite a bustling city on Saturday nights.
Below are pics of Hallgrimskirkja, an Evangelical-Lutheran church, in Reykavik. Amnesty International was projecting names and images on the front of the church.
On Sunday, we took an abbreviated route through Iceland's famed Golden Circle. First stop on the route was Geysir (pics below).
There were some interesting instructions on a stall in the men's restroom, or water closet as you say in Iceland, at a restaurant at Geysir. Obviously, western toilets are different from eastern toilets. Being from the southeast, I may have to try the eastern way shown on the right side of the photo below.
After Geysir, next stop was Gullfoss, which is a very impressive waterfall. Below are pics of Gullfoss and some interesting information regarding attempts to harness its power for electricity.
After Gullfoss, we stopped by Dingvellir, where the tectonic plate of 2 continents, North America and Eurasian, are separating a little each year. At Dingvellir, we had our first real ice incident. We were walking up a pretty steep incline, inching our way up slipping and sliding on ice the entire way. We came upon some icy steps, and barely made it up 2 steps before deciding our current European trip was too much in its early stages to break an arm or leg falling on ice. We turned around and slowly headed back to our car. On our way back, we came across an Asian family having a hard time standing up on the icy path. We stopped and talked to them and told them the path got slicker on up ahead. As Lisa was standing there talking to them, she decided to demonstrate to them what could happen if they continued on. Out went both of her feet from under her and she commenced to slide into the Asian father, almost taking him out, but he was able to stop her slide, and we got her back on her feet. A visual is worth a thousand words. No bruises or serious injuries.
We made it to our Airbnb in Keflavik for the night close to the airport, and were able to wash clothes and get everything ready for our departure from Iceland and travel to Amsterdam tomorrow. We have thoroughly enjoyed the time we have spent in Iceland. It's a very sparsely populated, rugged country. We will be trading in the dirt and less developed terrain of Iceland for the more developed, concrete jungles of Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris for the remainder of our trip.
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