All good things must come to an end.  Waking in Reykjavik for the last day in a country I’ve fallen madly in love with, I don’t want to leave.  I want more time in Iceland, and I don’t want our Scandinavian adventure to come to an end.

All wishing aside, we have a 6pm flight, so have almost a full day to explore Reykjavik.  After a leisurely breakfast, we walk up a small hill from our hotel toward one of the iconic buildings in the town – Hallgrímskirkja:

It’s stunning by itself, but even more so when contrasted with the architecture in the rest of the city.  Set off against a brilliant blue sky, here is Hallgrímskirkja, looking straight up its 244 foot tower:

This is a Lutheran church and has a very simple internal design.  The church is (relatively) new having only been fully completed in 1986 after almost 40 years of construction.  While we were inside, the organist was testing out the pipe organ for a concert a few hours later:

You can go up inside the church’s tower for a view over Reykjavik.  We elected not to go up and instead headed back outside into the beautiful morning:

In front of the church is a statue of Leif Eriksson which was placed here before the construction of the church began:

Leaving Hallgrímskirkja, we wandered around the city for the rest of the morning to take in the sights we hadn’t seen so far in our time here.  First, here’s a shot looking down Frakkastigur giving a good perspective on the general architecture of Reykjavik and the connection to the water:

The main shopping street of Laugavegur (also the street our hotel was on):

The waterfront area:

One of our favourite things while out walking around was trying to pronounce the street and place names.  Don’t think we got many of these right:

Our last meal ended up in the same place as the previous night.  This time, I stayed away from the shark, settling for mussels and fried potatoes that I couldn’t get enough of.  Our waiter informed us (after we’d eaten what were the best mussels we’ve ever had) that the mussels are sometimes poisonous, but “luckily our chef can tell the good ones and bad ones apart”.  We got a good laugh out of that.

A few hours after this feast we were on our way home.  We planned these two days in Iceland to be a bit of a scouting trip to see if we’d want to come back for a longer tour in the future.  Safe to say that will be happening.