{"id":25938,"date":"2026-10-26T09:47:25","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T09:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/?p=25938"},"modified":"2026-10-26T10:09:44","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T10:09:44","slug":"part-2-of-the-walking-tour-of-downtown-reykjavik-iceland-and-the-lava-show","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/2026\/10\/26\/part-2-of-the-walking-tour-of-downtown-reykjavik-iceland-and-the-lava-show\/","title":{"rendered":"Part 2 of The Walking Tour of Downtown Reykjav\u00edk, Iceland and The Lava Show"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

continued<\/a>… we continued back down the hill towards the park with the lake. Close to the church, it was primarily colorful row homes. We weren’t sure if they were large single family homes or multifamily homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Within a couple of blocks, we came to the swankier part of town, with larger single family residences on large lots with big yards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As we neared the park, the houses became more fancy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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This was the park. You can see the lake ahead to the right of the path. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the lake, we turned and followed a path along the water towards the city center. Here were a couple shots of the lake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were quite a few sculptures in the park. One was visible above. This one was probably the most memorable for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The houses on the other side of the lake were also large and charming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We decided to take a main road that paralleled the ocean back to the hotel. As we navigated towards the road, we passed several charming homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The buildings on the other side of the road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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On our side, we walked past a large, old cemetery, which was to the right in the photo below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of the buildings on this road appeared to be residential, a mix ranging from houses, to multifamily houses to townhouses to apartment buildings. We also passed a school. Most of the buildings were blocky and unattractive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We eventually came to the roundabout where the Viking Museum was<\/a>, and from there, it was only a few steps more back to the hotel<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After hearing how much Christi and Keith had liked The Lava Show<\/a>, Eric wanted to see it. Keith wanted to see it again since he’d fallen asleep, and Christi was happy to see it again. We decided to go to the 1600 show and rested in the room until it was time to head out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had a different host. This host was a former teacher from Ireland who’d met an Icelandic girl and moved to Iceland to marry her. He’d always been interested in geography and geology. He gave the same background<\/a> on owners and showed the same video about why Iceland was so geologically active<\/a>. We met the lava melter guy. The lava demonstration was mostly the same, though this host shared some different tidbits of information than the other host had. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When talked about Pele\u2019s hair, he mentioned that the Icelandic name for them translated to “witch hairs.” It was because the shards of volcanic glass fell into the grass, then the animals would eat them and digestive problems resulted. Here was the host putting an ice block on the lava to create a gas bubble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the disparity between the texture of the crust versus underneath the crust. He also talked about how they knew when a volcano was erupting under ice \u2013 basically there would be a notable increase in melt water<\/a> and a dip in the surface above the fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he talked about how slowly lava cooled, instead of the citing the island from the 70s<\/a>, he mentioned an eruption from a few years ago here in Iceland where it the lava field was still registering several hundred degrees in the middle of winter. In the last Lava Show post, we’d include a photo of what it looked like when he pulled up the crust after it had turned black on top. This was a video clip of the same scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Q & A at the end, he talked about how terrifying the Vik volcano was. A glacier <\/a>was over it, so if it erupted there would be massive flooding \u2013 the equivalent of the water flow of the world\u2019s four largest rivers combined. But the glacier was so big that an eruption wouldn’t necessarily completely melt it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Q & A, clarified that the basaltic columns were the shape the lava wanted to naturally form into and did so when it could cool slowly and crystalize. However, the shape the lava took was highly dependent on external circumstances, so it could take the form of ash, pumice, black sand, glass, hyaloclastites, etc. depending on the circumstances<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christi found the show to be just as interesting the second time around. Eric and Keith also enjoyed it. There were some basaltic columns near the exit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There was a local chocolatier and ice creamery called OmNom a few buildings down from the Lava Show, so we stopped by and bought some chocolate to eat later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We had dinner at a pizza restaurant called Flatey that was directly across the street from the Maritime Museum.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The pizza was Napoletana style, which meant it had very thin crust — which was what we liked best. It was phenomenally good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From there, we took a different route back to the hotel. We walked behind the Maritime Museum to take a look at Grandi Harbor. This boat was behind the museum and looked like it was one of the museum exhibits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here were a couple shots of the habor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There was an interesting memorial statue near the boat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From there, we walked back to the hotel, which was only a couple of short blocks away. The hotel looked different to us from the angle we approached from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Back in the room, we dug into the chocolate. We were disappointed to report that we didn’t like it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eric had won a prize at yesterday’s convention event<\/a>, but he was told he had to pick up the prize later. Eric got a text that the prize was ready for pick up, so we rented a scooter and went back downtown to get it. He passed the rainbow road that we\u2019d missed earlier today<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eric was not gone long. We’d gotten a lot of exercise and were tired, so it was an early night for us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

continued… we continued back down the hill towards the park with the lake. Close to the church, it was primarily colorful row homes. We weren’t sure if they were large single family homes or multifamily homes. Within a couple of … 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":[45,39,1,19,44,429,398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-europe","category-general","category-guided-tour","category-history","category-iceland","category-tourist-activities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938","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=25938"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25991,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25938\/revisions\/25991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kosmos.liveflux.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}