Three Days To Go - And a day in Reykjavík

Lucy’s Nordic Capital Cities Tour

The Count Down Begins - Three Days to Go

Friday 17th May 2019

Lucy has already visited Copenhagen, Thórshavn (Faroe Islands) and Reykjavík, and this year she hopes to add the following capital cities to her list:

Nuuk (Greenland)

Oslo

Stockholm

Mariehamn (Årland Islands)

Helsinki 

And Tallinn (Estonia)

She has spent the last couple of months planning her ‘Nordic Travels and  has been pouring over maps, reading books, watching films, learning new languages and planning a rough itinerary. She is flying out to Reykjavík on Tuesday and then plans to travel by plane, bus, train and ferry to visit as many of these cities as she can. 

Sunday 19th May 2019

She is getting very excited and also a bit nervous as the big adventure starts tomorrow when she will get the train to Manchester Airport. She started to panic this evening when she found out that lots of flights had been cancelled as the fuel pumps to refill the aircraft are faulty. Hopefully the problem will be resolved by Tuesday and the airport will be fully operational again. 

Monday 20th May 2019

Lucy has checked into a hotel near Manchester Airport and is sat up in bed glued to her iPad anxiously checking the departures. She tells me that most flights have taken off today, but a lot of them were late departing. I have insisted that she turns it off so that she can get a good nights sleep. She should be flying to Reykjavík early tomorrow afternoon. 

Manchester Airport

Tuesday 21st May 2019

Having a gin and tonic to calm her nerves. The flight was delayed by about 30 minutes, so she sat on the windowsill watching the planes going in and out. 

Finally we were on our way and as usual Lucy bagged the window seat on the plane. 

After a long and tiring day, we arrived in Reykjavík and checked into a room overlooking the bay. Lucy says that she didn’t think she felt that tired when she cycled here in 2017. It was a beautiful evening so we went for a stroll by the sea and revisited the Sólfar, Sun Voyager, sculpture. It is strange to think that when we saw it in January last year it was covered in snow. 

A day in Reykjavík

Wednesday 22nd May 2019

After a leisurely breakfast in the hotel Skyline restaurant overlooking the bay Lucy decided to spend the day around the old harbour and visited the Sjóminjasafnið (Maritime Museum). This was a good choice, as it was very quiet there after the hubbub of the city centre which was crawling with tourists. 

Sjóminjasafnið and the Fiskur og Fólk exhibition

This is appropriately housed in a former fish warehouse and Lucy immersed herself in the history of the Icelandic fishing industry. She learnt:

How to be a marine researcher

How to navigate and draw shipping charts

How to make cod liver oil. (Incidentally there was a bottle of Icelandic cod liver oil as part of the breakfast buffet this morning.) 

How to gut, dry and salt fish



She also drove a fork lift truck around the packing shed, learnt all about the cod wars and a lot more about the importance of the fishing industry in Iceland. 

Tomorrow we fly to Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, where Lucy’s Nordic Adventure will really begin