Normally people leave the next morning after completing the Ring Road drive. We had chosen to spend one extra day to allow us time to see the sights in Reykjavik itself and to relax(?) before heading home.

Reykjavik is certainly a walking city, the major shopping and historical center not being too large. Our first stop was at the Reykjavik Settlement Center which is located where builders uncovered the ruins of a Viking longhouse that dated back to 871AD. Part of the excavation is still visible and the city fathers have built yet another very good museum around it which describes the evolution of Iceland and its people. It is well done and certainly worth a visit by anyone going to Iceland.

From there we walked to the National Museum where we saw artifacts from the early history of Iceland. Our feet and minds wore out before we got much beyond the history up to the Reformation when Iceland moved from the Catholic religion to Lutheran. A future trip would be necessary to explore Icelandic history beyond that period. Again the museum was excellent and I enjoyed it immensely.

We went back to the hotel to rest our feet (and bodies) for a while before heading out to an early dinner (Italian tonight) as Scott had purchased tickets to the evening performance of “Icelandic Sagas-The Greatest Hits- in 75 Minutes”, a two actor comedy presented in Reykjavik’s lovely modern concert hall, Harpa. It was a hoot.

Back to the hotel to finish packing as we will be picked up at 7AM for transfer to the airport.

As the trip progressed Scott made it a game to push the daily “steps” with the hopes of getting at least 10,000 steps per day average. Today we completed 18,357 steps, with 9 floors of elevation gain. That made the total for the 10 day trip of 123,758 steps with 222 floors of elevation gain. Just seeing those numbers made me proud, but tired!  Goodnight!