{"id":25318,"date":"2026-09-30T10:43:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T10:43:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/?p=25318"},"modified":"2026-09-30T11:00:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T11:00:56","slug":"downtown-reykjavik-iceland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/2026\/09\/30\/downtown-reykjavik-iceland\/","title":{"rendered":"Downtown Reykjav\u00edk, Iceland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thursday, May 14 — The alarm went off at 0600. Christi had a hard time getting up. She woke Keith up at 0630 and he also had a hard time getting up. They let Eric sleep. The conference was starting later than Christi and Keith’s tour was starting, so he didn’t need to get up as early as they did. Christi and Keith got dressed and left the hotel at 0720. The plan was to walk to downtown and eat at restaurant called Baka Baka, located near the Harpa<\/a>, that served breakfast. Then they’d catch the tour bus at the Harpa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a side note, the hotel’s breakfast buffet was not included in the room rental fee. Since Christi and Keith didn’t love the breakfast yesterday they’d prefer to try another restaurant today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much to Christi’s frustration, about halfway to the destination, the cell service died and she was unable to access the map app on her phone. The streets were deserted — there was not another soul around to ask for directions. Christi and Keith were on their own to figure out where to go. And the map app had routed them on different streets than the taxi had taken, so nothing was familiar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christi knew their destination was to the northwest, so they tried to keep moving that direction. The small streets frequently dead ended at T-intersections, and they would turn and find the next street that seemed to be going north or west and follow it. They did eventually come to a courtyard area that Christi remembered from the map as the heart of downtown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christi knew Baka Baka was nearby. They wandered around in circles for a while, but never found it. Here were some photos of downtown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eventually, they noticed a bakery had just opened for the day, so they decided to go to the bakery for breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They didn’t really have breakfast food, so they both got ham and cheese sandwiches. It was served on thick multigrain bread, and instead of mustard or mayo, the bread was coated with rich butter. It was very filling. The bakery had a beautiful selection of pastries, most with names that were incredibly long and probably impossible to pronounce. Christi and Keith each got a pastry, too. Christi, who was normally eager to try the local cuisine, opted for a boring chocolate croissant. Keith got a raspberry and vanilla pastry that was delicious, but they couldn’t remember what it was called. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They stopped in at the mini-mart next door to get bottles of water. It may be the nicest mini-mart they’d ever seen. It had a hot fast-food counter and the employees were busy preparing rolls to go into the oven. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then they walked over to Harpa, which was northwest of the courtyard. Christi had noticed the building next to the Harpa yesterday in the taxi and it had fascinated her. From the little she knew of geology, she believed that the facade of the building was made from naturally formed basaltic lava columns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This photo was taken from the intersection closest to the courtyard. The Harpa was ahead. This helps with understanding distance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When they walked up to the Harpa, they were expecting to find a tour bus waiting for them in the same spot Eric’s bus had been yesterday<\/a>. They were surprised to see Eric waiting for them there, instead. He\u2019d gotten up earlier than expected and rented a scooter so he could make it to the Harpa quickly. Here were the views from the bus stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Since the bus wasn\u2019t there yet, all three of us went inside and wandered around for a few minutes. From the inside, the oddly shaped windows made it look like we were inside a bee hive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here was the view of the marina from the lobby. Eric joked about bringing Kosmos here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At 0845, Christi popped her head out again to check for the bus. No bus, and no group of tourists waiting for the bus. Hmmm…. She double checked the reservation and saw the tour was scheduled for tomorrow, not today. Oops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christi had been planning to go to The Perlan Museum tomorrow, so that became today’s activity. They said goodbye to Eric, who then went into the conference. Even though it hadn’t started yet, lots of people were already socializing inside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christi and Keith caught a taxi to the Perlan, arriving just after it opened at 0900. The fee was 7,290 ISK per adult ($61 USD) and they charged Keith as an adult. The tickets included a volcano\/ice cave tour at 0930. They perused most of the exhibits on the first floor while they waited. To be continued…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thursday, May 14 — The alarm went off at 0600. Christi had a hard time getting up. She woke Keith up at 0630 and he also had a hard time getting up. They let Eric sleep. The conference was starting … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,1,429],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-general","category-iceland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25318"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25363,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25318\/revisions\/25363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}