On Thursday afternoon after the blue lagoon, we had some free time to explore Reykjavik and do anything else we wanted to see in the city. I went to visit the Harpa, the Sun Voyager and the Hallgrímskirkja church on this day.
The Harpa's architecture was absolutely stunning to see and there were beautiful views of the sea and city that you could see from the top floor. I thought it was possible to go in the actual concert hall so was a bit disappointed to realise you couldn't do this, but it was good to see the structure of the building and all the events that the venue holds.
The Sun Voyager was an interesting piece of art work just on the shoreline not far from the Harpa building. I can't recall seeing any bits of information about why it was built and what it represented but I imagine it was related to the history of the Vikings.
The church was absolutely stunning to see and it had beautiful decor inside. I knew that you could go all the way to the top of the church to look down over the whole city but I didn't realise you had to pay for this until we arrived. I didn't think it was worth paying for it and we had to get to the Perlan museum for our exhibition at 6:30. The museum took a long time to walk to and was very isolated at the top of a hill. Unfortunately when we eventually arrived, the woman informed us that the 6:30 show about the aurora lights was in Icelandic. I was really annoyed about this as it was definitely not made clear to me on the website at the time. The woman said that we could exchange our tickets for the English show an hour afterwards but we decided we wouldn't wait for it. Instead we went all the way to the top of the museum where you can walk out on an open deck and see across the whole city with the mountains in the background. This made up for us not paying at the church which was amazing!
Walking around the city, I noticed that the buildings were all very different. Known for their bright coloured houses, each building was a different shape size and layout to the next. I found this very strange and whilst it is supposedly a modern country with updated infrastructure, some venues did not express this and looked half finished. There is a lot of unused land around Iceland which I guess they could do more with, but it is also untouched scenery that they don't want to mess with. Whilst there were a few buses operating around the city, I didn't look into how often they ran or where they could take us. There is not currently a train station in Iceland which means the only other available mode of transport is a taxi, which as you can imagine are extremely expensive!! Having said this, our hotel wasn't far from the city centre and any places we wanted to visit were in walking distance. The only thing that was too far away was the Grotta Lighthouse in Seltjarnarnes, as this was supposed to be the best chance of seeing the northern lights. However, I decided against it as it would have taken too long to walk and been to expensive to get a taxi.
Before visiting Reykjavik, I was told it was a very cultural city with musical and artistic elements. I don't feel that I really saw this, the streets weren't very busy and there wasn't many clubs or bars near where we were that looked appealing with a music scene. We had been told about Kiki Queer Bar so decided to visit there and see a drag act. Whilst this was more arty than anything else I had seen, it was more of a good night designed for tourists. This could be due to seasonality though as maybe they save their big festivals and music nights for when the maximum amount of tourists are there. I do feel disappointed by this as I was hoping to see a bit of personality and character, but I definitely think there is more to the city of Reykjavik than what I saw.
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