Tuesday 8/30/16

We are on our way to Iceland!  We fought Boston traffic and got to the airport at 5:15 PM only to discover that Icelandic Air goes out of a remote terminal and there was no line at security.  We ate dinner at Legal Seafood and then had a wait until our flight left at 9:30 PM.  I am not complaining though as I would much rather be early than late.  We had a good flight except that our area of the plane was quite hot and Lana John and Kelly who were about ten rows behind us were freezing.  About 4 in the morning, an elderly woman fell into the aisle, whether from dizziness, sickness or stumbling we do not know.  The flight crew was wonderful and reacted immediately and there was a doctor seated two rows in front of me who helped out.  They started oxygen and an IV and had her in the aisle administering first aid for quite some time, but she seemed to be much better by the time we landed.  An ambulance crew came on board and took it from there.  We were met by our guide after we passed through passport control/customs and then waited a few minutes for some of the others of our group to get through.  We took a long ride in morning rush hour traffic and finally got to our hotel in Reykjavik.  We had breakfast at the hotel and then were able to get into our rooms before meeting Loftur, our guide, for a walking tour.  We walked by some lovely and colorful houses before stopping at the Hallgrimskirkju, a lovely Protestant church in the city.  The organ was very unusual with some horizontal pipes and we were lucky as the choir was practicing for a concert and we got to listen in.  There is a big statue of Leif Eiricsson (their spelling) outside of the church.  The statue was given to Iceland by the United States on what is thought to be the 1000th anniversary of his landing in North American - 950 AD.  Continuing our walk, we passed by a few houses that were sided in corrugated iron - very unusual, but after a fire in the 1950's it became quite popular.  We then went to the Harpa, the concert hall.  It was a great building made of glass.  The glass is in blocks meant to remind us of basalt columns as was the church (concrete, though, not glass).  The group then split up:  A few went back to the hotel for a nap as few of us had slept on the plane, a few including Lana, Kelly and I went back to a wonderful shopping street that we had passed on our walk, and the rest went with Loftur to see the parliament buildings.  Unfortunately, the shopping looked better from the street - I only bought a few postcards.  We made our way back to the hotel and had a short nap before going down to a welcome chat and then dinner.  I will have to put pix on later as my eyeballs are falling out of my head.  We are on the road tomorrow so will tell you all about it when I can.