Roaming Around Reykjavik

I love to travel to new places and have always dreamed of traveling to Iceland! Enjoy my videos from roaming around Reykjavik to see the sights at summer solstice:

Lisa is in Iceland  country #102! June 2022

I flew on United from Los Angeles LAX to Newark EWR and then on a second flight to Iceland.

Flying to Iceland : Part 1

NYC to  Iceland

Walking in Reykjavik Iceland–my self guided tour from Grandi by Center Hotels to Harpa and the harbor

City Walk Reykjavik Iceland! Best tour 

I love to learn about the places I visited and the tour with CITY WALK Iceland was incredible. Our guide, Eirikurviljar, is a historian and as we walked in the rain he taught us about Reykjavik and its beginnings. We walked through a neighborhood with buildings from the 1800s. Many earlier buildings were built with timber and were destroyed by a fire in 1915. After the fire wooden buildings in downtown were not allowed, new construction was only concrete or stone. Buildings build before 1800s didn’t make it through the years because they were poorly build, mainly made out of mud, grass and stone (called turf houses–and you can see what they looked like when you visit Sky Lagoon Iceland). The city began as a fishing village and was first populated by Norwegian farmers looking for a better life (and Norwegians fleeing conflict back home in Norway). Iceland was one of the last places settled in Europe. Erik also explained that Iceland was a retirement location for Viking pirates!

The country uses geothermal energy to heat the buildings in the city and some of the heat is used to keep the water by the shore warm for bathing and for ducks in the city center at Lake Tjornin!

Iceland is the largest island after Britain and has only 380,000 people and 2/3 of them live in Reykjavik. While there are over one million sheep in Iceland, less than one million humans have been born in Iceland.

We went into City Hall to learn at the topographical map and saw the location of Surtsey, the newest island and a UNESCO site which was formed from volcanic eruptions from 1963-1967. Iceland also has the largest glacier in Europe and is home to the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, whose eruption grounded flights all over Europe. Over 100,000 flights were cancelled during the volcanic ash crisis in April 2010, with over 10 million people affected. At the time, many people could not locate Iceland on a map but afterwards, it became one of the most desired bucket list destinations!

Iceland sits on very active tectonic plates and is growing in land mass every year at a rate of 2cm which is also how fast your nails grow! You can travel all the way around Iceland on the ring road and see small villages of 300-700 people, tall mountains and search for Arctic fox, seals, whales, puffins and reindeer.

We walked from the City Center to Parliament which has a dragon, eagle, giant and bull painted on its side as protection and up Skólavörðustígur street in downtown Reykjavík–also known as rainbow road to Hallgrímskirkja church. I highly recommend this tour with City Walk and Eirikurviljar!

Where to EAT? Grazie Iceland  in Reykjavik— new Italian  restaurant. We loved our waiter, ALEX!

Sunshine in Reykjavik, Iceland I loved seeing the blue sky today!

Where to EAT? ROK Restaurant Reykjavik, Iceland . I loved the small shared plates and the view of Hallgrimskirkja cathedral.

THANK YOU to Pursuit Collection for this amazing adventure. See my next article at Sky Lagoon Iceland!

ALL of my ICELAND videos:

READ MY ARTICLE: Feeling Icelandic at Sky Lagoon Iceland