July 24, 2020
Day 13 - Sightseeing day
Reykjavik
Day 13 - Reykjavik - Sightseeing day
There's quite a few museums to choose from so I did some research last night about the various prices and opening times for each one. Reykjavik offers a 'city pass' which gives unlimited bus travel and free/discounted museum entry, but the nearby youth hostel reception which sells it didn't open until 11am (which seems pretty late), so I just made my own way into town instead. It was easily close enough to cycle but after getting my last bike stolen in Australia, I'm paranoid about leaving it in cities unattended, especially with the tiny cable lock I brought with me this time.
Even though it was 10am, Reykjavik felt like a ghost town. There was a 20 minute walk to the first attraction I wanted to go to, and there were virtually no cars anywhere, let alone other tourists. I was half expecting to find the museum boarded up and empty. Iceland National Museum had quite cheap entry and there were only 3 or 4 other people inside when I arrived which was nice. I'm usually the sort of person to read every single piece of information in a museum, and I spent a good few hours there. The place was smaller than I expected though, and the content of the exhibitions was a bit 'heavy'. It's hard to explain exactly what I mean by that, but there was absolutely masses of reading for each exhibit and a large chunk was dedicated to religion over the years which doesn't really interest me at all. I had hoped to find more information about original settlement, inland exploration, flora/fauna, battles that were fought, and what life was like for the extremely remote communities before the ringroad connecting everything was built. Even for someone interesting in history, I found it a little bit boring by the end if I'm honest.
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Eating out in Iceland is notoriously expensive so after taking some pictures of the iconic Hallgrímskirkja church, I wandered up and down the main high street for a while looking at food menus. Everything was too expensive for me, with the exception of one bar that suddenly caught my eye who were offering any burger on the menu, plus fries and drink for 1250ISk (£6.50). That was weirdly great value and I complemented it with some cheap bread and chocolate from a nearby supermarket. The whole place feels a lot more similar to the UK than any other mainland European countries I've been to. Virtually everything was written with an English translation too. I haven't visited any of the other Scandinavian nations yet, so I'm not sure if their larger towns and cities feel the same.
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The Culture House Museum was included in the ticket price for the other one I'd just been into, so it made sense to pay a visit here too. I wasn't sure what to expect because I'm not that fussed about Art & Culture anyway, but I think I enjoyed it more than the National Museum because looking at photographs and weird artwork was just easier to disgest. There were some abstract pieces that I did not rate at all though! With still a few hours left of the afternoon, I headed over to Iceland's Phallological museum because it looked like a good laugh, but the spot where I thought it was located was all boarded up and the skies were starting to pour with rain so I jumped back onto the bus instead of investigating where it had moved to. Yesterday there were 7 new Coronavirus cases in Iceland for the first time in ages, so they announced that strict distancing procedures would be put back into place midday today. I had no idea about that this morning, so it's a good job I just happened to take my mask with me or I wouldn't have been allowed on the bus. There was a sign up at the campsite too saying there were now closed to more visitors due to distancing capacities so I must've got here at the just the right time!
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Back at the my tent, I didn't really want to just lounge around for 5 hours, so decided to head to the large swimming baths next door to the campsite. No goggles or tunks, and my pair of casual cargo shorts will have to suffice! Despite doing the occasional triathlon and working as lifeguard when I was younger, I haven't been properly swimming in about 7 years and I could definitely tell. You can carry on doing gentle breaststroke for seemingly forever, but I was very tired after only a few lengths doing front and back crawl. My arms ached, my chest felt tight, and I could barely remember to kick with my legs at the same time! Not having goggles can't have helped though, and apparently the pool was a full 50m olympic-size instead of the 25m I'm used to. One of the tips the Icelandic cyclist I met near Akureyri gave me, is to go between the hot and cold pools to help your muscles, so I decided to give it a go. The 42C hot tub was amazing and I'm sure that I could've fallen asleep in there. 10 minutes later and I begrudgingly dragged myself out and decided to be brave by dunking straight into the icy 6C pool with hesitation. It was painfully cold but I enjoyed the experience so repeated the whole process again a couple of times. Everything felt very relaxed and refreshed afterwards so looks like that tip of his worked.
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