A Land of Ice and Fire - Day 3

After yesterday's excursion, we had a very lazy start today.  Dad was a bit ill, so it was a slow breakfast and sauntered out of the house at 11am, heading down to Reykjavik harbour.

This is where the city centre and a lot of the museums are.  We decided to go to Aurora Reykjavik, partly because it had the most reasonable price!  The Maritime musem (the educational option) was closed for an exhibition swap, and Whales Of Iceland (a hanger full of life-sized plastic whales) didn't really appeal.  So we went for the whimsical option, given that there was almost no chance of seeing the aurora for real at this time of year, and with the cloud cover we were predicted.
It was pretty good actually!
It's only a little centre but they get a lot in, and as with most things if you go in with the intent of making the most of it, you'll have a good time.  There's a corridor explaining the folklore of different countries around the aurora, and then a section on the science of it.  I did actually learn a few things, like why the aurora appears in different colours, and why to the naked eye it always looks more desaturated than on camera.
There's also an area dedicated to actual tourist photos, how to set up your camera, what weather to look for.  All very helpful.
And then we found our favourite bit - the Theatre Room!

The theatre room - the closest to the Northern Lights we were going to get!

The lights are off, and there are chairs at the back, but at the front there are furry rugs, and adult-sized beanbags, all pointed at the screen which plays a 20 minute time lapse of the auroroa, complete with soothing spa music, in a warm dark room.  It was like being in a spa and... what I'm leading upto is that certain people did fall asleep!  This must happen a lot, because you get a free cuppa when you exit to bring you round again.  We stayed in there for about 40 minutes, watching the whole loop at least twice, and emerged incredibly relaxed!

Shhh, Emma is asleep!

Put a pin in to show where you're from!

Strolled back through the shipyard, and into a deli that sold us an incredibly creamy soft cheese (from incredibly creamy soft Icelandic cows!) with white wine jelly.  By this point it was past 2am so Dad (fully perked up_ came to meet us and we had cake at Caffe Loki on the first floor.  There's an amazing mural of some of the exploits of Loki that takes up the whole length of the longest wall.  Like that time he won the gods a bet by turning himself into a mare... and later giving birth to a mutant horse as a result!  I enjoyed trying to identify all the stories.  Also Skyr is delicious in cheesecake.

We wandered round the shops and invested in some arts and crafts.  Something I loved were a set of small pots in the window of a ceramics shop, which had been glazed to echo the colours of the Icelandic landscape.  I'm loving the colours out here - the charcoal of the rock, the white of the snow and ice, the soft greys of the sky, and then the punches of acidic green and vivid turquoise of the moss and water, and they'd captured them beautifully.  Emma bought one, which turned out to be the creation of the lady on the till!

Then along the harbour wall, looking across to the mountains and passing more sculptures, and back to the apartment.  We have realised that due to the name of it, when we're going to meet up back there we can say, in all sincerity, "See you in Valhalla."