Sunday 29 November 2009: Last Day in Iceland

We awoke to thick snow this morning and a windy, cold blizzard outside. We took the free hotel shuttle bus into Reykjavik at 09.30 after another hearty breakfast and it was still dark as we ventured out into the snowy deserted streets of the city. Well if I lived here and it was this dark and cold on a Sunday morning I would still be in bed too!
We walked up towards the Lutheran Church (Hallegrimskirkja Church), which sits on higher ground in the middle of the old town and has a bell tower that is the highest point in the city. The Christmas lights were still on in the streets and everywhere looked so pretty (see photo). The Church is modern and quite plain inside but still really beautiful. It was built during the last century and in 1992 a church organ with 5275 pipes and 72 stops was inaugurated. It is a magnificent organ and we were lucky enough to be there when the organist (Hordur Askelsson) was practicing for the service later that morning. The tone was so rich and crisp; we couldn’t help but sit and listen for a while.
Then we paid a small fee and took the elevator up into the bell tower where we had unrivalled views out across the city. It was bitterly cold up there but the views were well worth the pain! After leaving the church we went in search of a hot coffee to warm us and we stopped at Café Paris in the centre of town. Before leaving to head back to the hotel and the airport we walked to The National Museum of Iceland to find out a little about the island’s history. A very modern, well planned out museum, we only had an hour to spend there so we were grateful that it wasn’t too big! The one thing I learnt from the visit was that Iceland is an ancient, peace loving community that has slowly and diplomatically won it’s independence from the rule of Denmark without any major skirmishes. It has been a hard existence making a living in the barren, remote lands here but they have endured and won. It is certainly a very welcoming and accommodating place to visit and I feel sure we will be back at some stage –maybe in the summer next time.