A last day in (kind of) sunny Reykjavik
Reykjavik means "smokey bay" and our last day in the city lived up to this name. It started with a misty walk to one of the city's top bakeries, which was just a few blocks from our apartment: Braud. As always, in Reykjavik, the walk is its own destination, and we found more murals and charm along our route.
Braud, itself, is in a very colorful home with a great old-school shop window filled with all the day's best baked goods. As with most places in the city, despite its hipster red, everyone was super friendly and spoke English.
A note: I had my Google-translate app at the ready for this trip and had downloaded the dictionaries for the most common languages we would encounter (Icelandic; German, which Ned speaks a little; French, which I speak even less; and Italian). The best (and kind of creepiest) is the ability to have all text in an image immediately translated. Given the gf/lf question, this has been very helpful on food labels. Highly recommend!
Anyway--Braud lived up to the hype, with crazy delicious croissants and cinnamon rolls! But, no oat milk lattes, so we were back to Emilie and the Cool Kids to grab Harper's morning breakfast.
These little camper vans are everywhere. At first, when I saw only one, I thought--how weird to have this on the side of your van. When I realized it was the company slogan, I thought--totally Iceland.
By the way, I realized I hadn't taken a photo of our apartment. That entire second floor (with the red open windows) has been ours for the past five days--it's a light-filled, loft like space that (from the doors to the interior building hallway) used to be three separate small apartments. There was more than enough comfy room for all of us, and we loved it; if you ever think about going to Reykjavik, I highly recommend the flat and the location. The place below our apartment is a hip taco and mezcal restaurant, though we never heard any noise, and the place to its left is a recording studio. Apparently Hverfisgata is the Reykjavik equivalent of the Meatpacking District in the mid 70s, an up and coming urban hot spot. Up the block (near the Extra grocery) is an entire block being redeveloped. So, I'm guessing our AirBnB hosts got in at just the right time.
Again, the quirk, sudden charm of Reykjavik emerged. The city mixes old maximalist and new minimalist Scandinavian architecture and design. So a curlicued and ornamented building from 1909 will be sitting next to a sleek grey or black apartment building--and in-between, you'll find small, brightly-colored corrugated metal homes. It really is a beautiful city that would never be mistaken for any other place. We've loved being here!
Along the harbor, we took some snaps at the Sun Voyager sculpture:
And, voila, smokey bay!
After dinner, I was exhausted and needed to start packing and prepping for our 4 am departure, so I begged off the Elf tour. This turned out to be a good idea, since a work thing popped up, anyway, so I completed that whilst watching Emily in Paris and the latest Netflix offering, The Pub Crawlers in Reykjavik.
Ned and the kids stuck with the tour, whose guide forgot it was scheduled and arrived about 30 minutes late (classic Iceland-time). They came back with stories of violent elves and witches, the many Santas of Iceland, and some unusual tour mates. As Harper put it: he was kind of funky and others on the tour had the same funky vibe.
On the way home, Penn lifted a truck, and Harper and Ned stopped in for tacos and mezcal.
We settled in for our last never-dark Icelandic night, dreaming of elves, cinnamon rolls, and Bjork--whose house Ned swears he took a picture of on the elf tour.
Takk, Iceland. Your gorgeous capital city, brutal and beautiful scenery, warming blue lagoon, and hip and friendly people made every minute of our stay unforgettable. Bless, bless!
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