Wiped out is only a weak preamble to how we both feel right now. We had some exploring to do, though, so we were going to do it. I was up before the alarm again; knowing how early we'll have to get up tomorrow, we decided to keep getting up early. I showered in “the fart chamber” and shaved. We took our time getting ready since there was no real plan or schedule. After breakfast, we headed up to Laugavegur to actually see it with some of the shops open. It wasn't as thrilling as we might have thought, but there was some neat stuff to peruse. We walked down Laugavegur and then up the other shopping street, Skólavörðustígur (SKO-la-vuur-thoos-tee-goor), which led directly to Hallgrímskirkja (Hall-greems-kirk-ya), the massive cathedral at the center of town. What a striking building! As impressive as it is on the skyline, it is very clean and bright on the inside. You'd think that a cathedral such as this would be dark, solemn, and tinted with stained glass, but not so here. The crystal baptismal font and the pipe organ were the most impressive parts of this mighty church.
After that, we walked back to Laugavegur and found the vegetarian restaurant, Á næstu grösum (OW NICE-to GREW-sume), who had a very interesting buffet. It would all have been excellent if the chickpea salad hadn't been ruined with cilantro! PLEH! Tastes like soap. It was quite fulfilling nonetheless and gave us a second wind. We continued on to the city center and caught the bus back up the hill with Perlan our objective. We caught the 18 bus to The Pearl and it was marvelous. How cool to take hot water tanks and make an attraction out of it. A beautiful 360° panorama of the city that didn't cost 500 ISK each, like at Hallgrímskirkja. We got some of our best landscape photos yet up there, and I finally got my last hat for the collection.
I hadn't mentioned here, but I've collected a hat from each of the five countries we've visited. It started at Kauppatori in Helsinki, when I needed to shade my frying melon from the midday sun, and it became a fixation. I got two national baseball caps (Finland, Sweden), a bucket hat from Denmark, a tuque in Norway, and for Iceland, a baseball cap that says, “ég tala ekki íslensku,” or, “I don't speak Icelandic.” I thought it was amusing since that's the one language of the five that I bothered to learn anything about!
It was now about 1545, so we got the bus back to town and went back down Laugavegur (monotonous, eh?) in search of comfort food and an early dinner. Santa Maria! Some mighty good Mexican food. By this point, walking had given way to trudging, so as we walked down Hverfisgata (KVER-fis-gotta), the main through-street, we caught the bus and went ONE stop, to save us from walking that little stretch. We stopped at the front desk to arrange our Flybus pickup at 0435 tomorrow, so you can see our desire for an early bed. We got back to the room and started packing. I checked email and how fitting that our wedding photos would get posted today—the last real day of our Honeymoon. Pern and Karen did a fantastic job.
Since tomorrow will likely be all travel and not that interesting, I'll skip day 14 and write a summary tomorrow or Wednesday, if I have the energy. Signing off at 1928.
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