We arrived at about 10am and are going to follow a walking tour. Many ships in the very large port. There is a shuttle bus for cruise ship passengers provided by the city. The shuttle drops passengers off at the Harpa Concert Hall.
This is the home of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and other local groups such as the Icelandic Opera and the Reykjavik Big Band. This building was completed in 2011 and replaced an earlier building. This statue was in front of the old building and was moved here.
Close by was the old harbour. Originally used for fisheries and trade it is now used for tours. Many whale watching tours leave from this point.
The art museum was on our left as we walked to our next destination. Not very impressive looking.
The Austurvollur Square is the main public square.
We stopped at Aurora Reykjavik. There was a very little chance of seeing the Northern Lights with all of the clouds. Here was a small museum dedicated to the explanation of the northern lights, Fantastic photos and film showing the lights and then a 3d virtual reality tour of the lights. Fantastic!
It was lunchtime and we decided to have a burger at the place that had a picture of Kramer from the Seinfeld show. Delicious!
Reykjavik could have been any other European city. Barcelona, Paris, Rome if you just used your imagination. They are all very similar.
Laugavegur was the street for shopping. We spent some time wandering in and out of the shops.
This church was almost in the center of town and was high up on a hill. A statue of Leif Erickson was out front and the Leif Erickson hotel across the street.
We walked back to the bus stop and took the bus back to the port.
We had dinner with Claire and Susie in one of the specialty restaurants on the ship. Susie spent the day walking through the city and Claire took a helicopter ride and described some interesting sights. There is an active volcanos that is not far away and the helicopter flew over it. Claire had some great video.
The evening entertainment was the a group called the Icelandic Folktales. Great show. Traditional folk music from Iceland complete with an interesting history. Iceland is very dark for about 6 months and this influences the music that is created here. Everything is in a minor key which creates very dramatic music. Two men from the group sang traditional folk tunes using parallel fifth movement throughout. Interesting sound but something avoided by Bach and Mozart. The group explained that they were cut off from the rest of the world until modern times so they were not influenced by these great composers. Piano, guitar, violin and cello. I gave the group a 10.
All in minor keys??? Not a fan of minor keys but would sound dramatic and fit with so much darkness.
The cathedral looks quite impressive.