Reykjavik Bus Tour

Sat., Sept. 2 - We spent Saturday morning on a bus tour of Reykjavik. The bus drove around the city while the tour guide pointed out interesting sights. Some of the places we saw include Hofdi House, where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1986 at a Summit meeting that resulted in the beginning of the end of the Cold War. We also saw where the famous chess match was held between Bobby Fischer and the Soviet Union defending champion in 1972. It was called the match of the century. At the time they were trying to decide where to hold the match, kept changing the chosen location, and ended up deciding on Reykjavik. Many people were surprised and wondered why Iceland.  We passed by more swimming pools and were told again how popular swimming is in Iceland. Most people swim in the mornings before work, and children here are required to learn how to swim, beginning at age 5. We drove by the Old Harbor where there are many boutiques, restaurants, shops, and of course boats, which offer whale watching and Puffin watching trips. We drove by the largest and most famous church in Iceland, Hallsgrimskirkja Lutheran Church. The exterior of the church resembles columns of basalt, in keeping with the geological theme of Iceland. The inside of the church is fairly plain, but with a particularly interesting phenomenon: the pews have movable backs. You can shift the back of the bench-like pew so that they can face either forward or backward toward the rear of the church. Or I suppose you could move some of them and not others so that people can face each other. There was a sign for the tourists asking that they please not move the pews. There is a large statue in front of the church, and you'd think it would be a statue of a saint but it was a statue of Leif Erickson. No explanation as to why Leif Erickson's statue graced the front of the church.

We also drove by City Hall which is situated on the edge of a pond with ducks and pedestrian bridges, and bordered by nice flowers in a park-like setting. We passed a laboratory where they are conducting Genome research and were told that they are using local Icelanders in their research due to their isolation from other people. We passed some foreign embassies and the National Museum. Then we made a stop at The Pearl, which is Iceland's oldest university. It is called The Pearl because it has a white dome top and from a distance resembles a pearl. We went to an observation deck there where we were afforded beautiful views of the surrounding city of Reykjavik. We ended our morning tour with a stop at the Open Air Museum, which is a collection of houses, farms, and a church in a setting which shows what life was like in Reykjavik in earlier times. Inside the church, they had us sit the way people did back then, with women all on the left side and the men on the right.