We were so busy leading up to this cruise that I didn't have time to do a blog post to set it up! The cats knew that something was up and spent lots of time sleeping on, or in, the suitcases while we packed.
One of our scheduled cruises for this year is a north Atlantic crossing from Reykjavik, Iceland to New York City, also on board Crystal Serenity. We flew into Reykjavik a day early, on September 16, and managed to do a couple of things we hadn't been able to on our previous visits in the past 2 years.
Once we arrived at 9:00 a.m. and were driven the 45 minutes from Keflavik to Reykjavik, we dropped our bags at our hotel and decided to take advantage of the surprisingly nice day before the possible afternoon rain showers appeared. We were staying at the Hotel Reykjavik Saga, which was also very central to everything we wanted to see.
We headed toward the Hallgrimskirkje, the main Lutheran Cathedral of the city. It is a huge concrete structure that dominates the landscape, even from 15 km outside of the city as it was built on the highest point of Reykjavik.
I had seen a YouTube video posted by someone who had a day to spend here, and he visited the cathedral and the bell tower. You have to purchase a ticket to ride up the tiny (max 6 persons) elevator to get there, but the view is spectacular.
From the elevator which stops at the level of the clock faces, you can walk up a stairway to get to the bell level, and even stand under them as they chime every 15 minutes. We were up there just before noon and thought it might be just a little too hard on the eardrums to be that close to the 12 loud bongs, so we returned to the lower level and listened from there. I have some video which I will try to post.
I had also noticed on the drive in that there seemed to be some scaffolding on one end of the building, so, just to make sure our scaffolding photo collection was complete, we had to stop for a photo.
Our other stop before heading back to the hotel for a little rest time was for lunch. On the flight they had served us a sandwich snack after takeoff and then a breakfast an hour and a half before landing. The flight was only around 5 hours long, and we were starting to get a little peckish. We went back to Bistro 101 where we had, once again, Icelandic Fish and Chips. Delicious as usual!
After some time to recharge, as we hadn't been able to get any real sleep on the plane, we went down to the hotel's lounge where I discovered a local Icelandic liqueur called Eldblóm. It is made from chrysanthemum flowers and local wild botanicals of the west coast. It tastes like a cross between the botanical tartness of Aperol and the smooth sweetness of Elderflower liqueur. I had an Icelandic Spritz, which just replaces the Aperol with Eldblóm.
Dinner was at the Fröken Reykjavik restaurant in our hotel. It is a beautiful restaurant and the food was all excellent. Larry had Flank Steak Frites and I had the Arctic Char. It was an amazing meal, topped off with a local specialty dessert called Ásdarpungar. It is like a deep fried cake donut with a cream cheese dough, covered with caramel drizzle and served with lemon thyme ice cream. Yummy!
On Wednesday morning we walked around the block to our favourite breakfast restaurant, the Laundromat Café, and had a good but not huge breakfast, as we would be heading over to board Crystal Serenity at around 11:30 and were looking forward to having lunch on board.
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| They even sat us at the same table we've had on our last two visits! |
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| Avocado toast, with cream cheese, avocado, spinach and quinoa along with the egg on sourdough bread. |
We made a little detour on our way back to the hotel to see a very interesting looking ship in the inner harbour, and also came across this sculpture of two people looking out, sort of in the direction of the sea, but not quite. Maybe they were meant to be searching the bay where Reykjavik's harbour sits.
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| This is actually an expedition cruise ship of sorts. It must be quite new given the weird bow shape there on the right. |
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| They're looking out over the harbour rather than the sea. |
We had passed this little bakery every time we walked toward the Hallgrimskirkje and had never gone in. I was determined not to do the same, and bought a huge cinnamon bun that we ate at the hotel. Not too sweet and not too sticky. It is definitely on my 'regular and recommended' list for the future.
A 10-minute taxi ride took us to the port where Serenity waited. Apparently she was the last cruise ship of the season, so now they could get on with constructing a proper cruise terminal building. Iceland is becoming more popular for cruise ships, and up to now there had only been a large tent to serve as the terminal. It will be interesting to see how far they get by August of 2026, which is our current next scheduled visit to Reykjavik.
We have two sea days before reaching Qaqortok, Greenland on Saturday.
