Iceland Part 1: Blue Lagoon and 7 of the 9 Museums in One Day

Now we are getting somewhere!  After a bit of a travel hiatus, or more really of just a domestic travel year, we decided that we would try to knock a couple more places off our list.  So for Thanksgiving 2018, we headed to Iceland.  

Our flight was overnight, so we landed in Reykjavik at about 5 in the morning local time.  Because our room wouldn't be ready for about 10 more hours, we decided to take a bus from the airport to the Blue Lagoon.  

Iceland has amazing geothermal springs that were tapped, and a resort-style hot-springs attraction built around it.  Hot water in Iceland all comes from these springs, which smell a bit sulphuric but feel amazing.  The hot water is also used for home heating, and the cooled water is returned to the ground.  

This is volcanic rock and a hot water spring. 

Our place was near the downtown area, which we accessed by this waterfront walking path. 

The Sun Voyager

It happened to be super windy, which made taking pix even more fun! 

On our first day, we did a walking tour of the city. 

Go NH!

From Wikipedia:  Hallgrímskirkja is a Lutheran parish church in Reykjavík, Iceland. At 74.5 meters high, it is the largest church in Iceland and among the tallest structures in the country. The church is named after the Icelandic poet and clergyman Hallgrímur Pétursson, author of the Passion Hymns.

This is our second day.  We bought a 48-hour museum pass and decided we would try to visit all of the museums that were open and within walking distance.  There were seven we could visit on the first day and two more on the second day.  We got up bright an early and headed out.  This is outside the Reykjavik Art Museum. 

From the Reykjavik Museum of Photography

In front of the Maritime Museum. 

Lunch break: Fish and chips. I wound up eating about three orders total, as no one else really seemed to enjoy it as much as I did.  

The Settlement Exhibition  This place is really cool.  They build the underground museum around an archaeological excavation of a tenth-century Viking longhouse

Walking past a cool cemetery. 

Spooky.

The Iceland National Museum, loaded with history.

Still going!  It is hard to tell what time it is because the sun sat at about the same place all day.  It was about 15 degrees above the horizon and just traveled that path.  It is about 4PM by this point. 

Still walking, and enjoying the amazing scenery. 

We stopped here to buy tickets for an island tour, which we will take in a couple of days.  The kids were pretty tired, so we almost called it quits for the day.  Except that Pooks somehow convinced R-Man that if we didn't get to the museums today we would have to backtrack and return tomorrow.  So, after 8 hours of walking and touring, we headed to our seventh museum of the day. 

We made it with about 25 minutes to spend inside.  

Tomorrow we will head out to see the other two museums, and then the island tour and aurora challenge!