While the bulk of our Icelandic adventures took place outside of Reykjavik proper, we did spend plenty of time in town exploring!
A few highlights: light on text, heavy on pictures...
Make sure to explore the actual center of town, starting at Austurvollur Square (also known as "Protest Square"). You'll see some of the first buildings in town, established by the Danes as a wool-trading market and later the home of Icelandic Parliament...
...statues of members of Iceland's Independence Movement, including this fox, Jón Sigurðsson...
...rocks that are symbolically split in two by irons of justice and such...the legends go on. We picked most of this up by reading plaques and referencing the numerous guidebooks our AirBnB hostess had left for us, but in hindsight a walking tour might have been fun.
Our first tastes of old-school Scandinavian architecture!
And of the locals' sense of humor...gotta love sticking the middle finger on every spike :)
Reykjavik is covered in street art. From the lowbrow, traditional graffiti...
...and the more amusing...
...to paths underfoot...
...and gorgeous wall art that Emily couldn't resist...it created visual surprises all over the place.
We ventured down to the harbor to explore on our last night.
During another stroll, we scoped out the Sun Voyager statue right on the water...it's meant to be a "dream boat," or an ode to the sun, but to me it looks like a lot of little cocktail forks or some kind of weird whale skeleton. Oh, Iceland!
And on the first afternoon, we explored the Hallgrimskirkja, Iceland's biggest church! Check out Leif Ericson hanging out in front...babe.
The spartan interior took me aback a little bit - I'm so used to the ornate churches of France, Italy and England!
The views from the top, however, were flawless.
If you're spending time in Iceland, make sure to check out Reykjavik instead of leaving the city all day every day! Apparently it's got fantastic nightlife (although we missed that due to early wake-ups), we enjoyed the shopping, and found some great restaurants too (details to follow!). Reykjavik is definitely a charmer!
