Reykjavík moments

Only two more days till we fly to London.

As seems to happen every time we leave a place, I’m spending our final days in Reykjavík trying to do and see as much as possible — while also spending a lot of time in the apartment, planning, packing, and doing last rounds of writing and painting.

Here are some favorite moments and sights from the past five days. As always: mouse over for descriptions, click to enlarge.

Wednesday the 19th

Perlan (The Pearl)

Öskjulíð hill

on our walk from the park to the shore: a rabbit?!

Nauthólsvik geothermal lagoon & swimming pool

Thursday the 20th

walking from our apartment to Vesturbaejarlaug, the swimming pool

I had hoped to have a whole post about the swimming pools, but I don’t know if I’ll manage that before we leave. If you have questions, ask in the comments. 🙂 Picture-taking is forbidden in the locker rooms and impractical in the pool area, so I observed as closely as possible and then went home and made sketches instead. Don’t forget to mouse over for my notes.

Our internet went wonky that day, forcing me to paint instead of bumming around on the internet. ;b

Friday the 21st

Nordic House library (same building where the Lars Lerin exhibit was)

Artotek: the Reykjavík libraries have this amazing art-rental program where you can select artworks and take them home for a fee. If you want to buy them, your rental fees go toward the purchase price; if not, you just return them. What amazes me most is that these artworks are just hanging out in the library — unattended in this case — and you can browse them at your leisure.

When the Nordic House library closed at 5, we migrated a couple of blocks to the National Library, which has a café. And look, they have their own dishware with a picture of the National Library building on it. 🙂

Saturday the 22nd

Laekjarbrekka, downtown. With typical Reykjavík dinner entrées running US $25 and up, our strategy has been to visit the “nice” restaurants for lunch instead, and to limit our meals out per week. This has worked very well at keeping us to budget!

Laugardalur park: “washing springs”

former hot springs area (now dry or diverted) where generations of Reykjavík’s housewives and servants did their washing

Laugardalur park: botanical garden

garden cat!

and now back to the actual garden ;b

As we were walking down a residential street to get from the gardens to the swimming pool complex, we noticed particularly fine plants in the yards — maybe the homeowners were inspired by the garden specimens?

Much later that evening: Tjörnin, the city pond, which is on our way home

Sunday the 23rd

on the south side of Tjörnin, where we discovered a park we didn’t know about

Kjarvalsstaðir, one of the Reykjavík Art Museum‘s three buildings

Fjallamjölk (Mountain Milk) by Jóhannes Kjarval (for whom the museum building is named). He’s got an interesting life story.

We went to a different swimming pool after the museum, and then passed by Hallgrímskirkja on the way home.