Iceland, Day 6: The flea market, the pearl, and the art

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS TO ENLARGE THEM

Surprisingly, it was raining. We slept in and just picked up breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Happily, nobody was pawing the bread with their bare hands this morning.

I had wanted to visit the famous (sort of) Reykjavík flea market, Kolaportið. There was also reported to be a great fish market there. Lots of photo ops, I hoped, too. I am a big fan of flea markets, estate sales, garage sales, and auctions. A? Not so much. But she was a good sport and tagged along anyway. Turns out it was a good thing that she did. Overall there wasn't really all that much to see at the flea market (unless you read Icelandic, in which case there were tons of bargain books you would enjoy). We did stop at the shop space of a woman who had really cool knitted goods for sale. We tried talking to her, and it turned out she had lived in Norway. So we chatted for a while in Norwegian, and then bought a pair of gloves. Overall the flea market was disappointing.

We walked over to the 66˚ North store so A could get the inventory control tag removed from the hat she'd bought a few days before. They hadn't even realized it was still attached when they sold it, which doesn't exactly speak well of their loss prevention methods. Still, they believed her when she told them about it, and were happy to detach it.

Perlan is the shiny building to the right

Again—in the rain—we took a cab over to Perlan. Perlan used to contain the hot water used by Reykjavík, but now it's this wild exhibition center thing that was having a huge shoe sale while we were there. There's a restaurant on top, and a wax museum where the water tanks used to be. (I'm a sucker for a good [and bad] wax museum.) The statues tell the story of the Icelandic sagas, and were modeled on citizens of Reykjavík. Because A is the way she is, she needed to get a look from outside the restaurant (it's on the top floor). Never mind the fact that it was raining and gusting winds something like 40+ mph. She went for it. Just fastened her furry hat to her head and made a complete circumnavigation of the building. Outside. Not my thing, but good for her. I'm just sorry I didn't get a shot of it.

The great shoe sale, complete with Icelandic palm trees

After lunch, we decided to head to the Hafnarhúsið (Harbor House Museum). It turned out to be only half a block from the flea market! It's a modern art museum, which means that pretty much anything may be on display at any one time. Part of their permanent collection is work by Érro, an Icelandic pop artist. His gig pretty much consists of appropriating American comic book styles, occasionally adding social and political commentary to his drawings. There was also an installation consisting of a dark room, a strobe light, and a basketball in the corner. Your guess is as good as mine as to what it meant, but A and I had a lot of fun messing around in the strobe light. That probably wasn't supposed to be part of the exhibit, but we enjoyed it. There were also rooms of video art that showed pieces that were sometimes 20 minutes long. It was hard not to fall asleep, but they were occasionally pretty interesting.

Having sufficiently enculturated ourselves at the museum, we walked around downtown, where it had miraculously stopped raining for an hour! We stopped in at Apótek, where we sat in the café in front. As soon as we sat down it started raining again, so good timing for us. We were a little peckish, and I had a bowl of tomato soup that turned out to be really, really good.

A few views of downtown. Why is it so dark? This is even after using Photoshop to lighten it, so you can get an idea of how it really looked, light-wise...

After feeding, we grabbed a cab back to the hotel. As we pulled up to the door, it stopped raining. Typical. After the rain there was an amazing rainbow that actually made a complete 180˚ arc. We hung out for a while and then tried to figure out what to do for dinner. We walked around trying to decide, and ultimately ended up at the same Ruby Tuesday where I had my first meal on Monday. There were a couple rounds of "no, that's not what I ordered," but things eventually worked out.

Once we'd walked back to the hotel, there wasn't much left but to get everything packed and prepare for our departure the next day. As it consisted of going to the airport and spending 6+ hours on a plane, I will spare you a separate blog entry. Lucky you.

All in all, Iceland is a beautiful if somewhat spartan country, and is probably a lot more beautiful in the summer. It was good to see it in the off season, though. Fewer people, and probably a much more "real" experience than we would have had at peak tourist time. I would recommend it, but only if you bring wet weather gear. And earmuffs.