History Happened Here

There aren’t any articles titled “Three Perfect Days In Reykjavik” for a reason, so after the bus dropped Rich and Meg off at the hospital, Carol and I separated from the group, as they were to tour the parts of the town we had already covered.

(By the way, I have the spelling of Reykjavik nailed!  It’s a like a Duke student who can spell Coach K’s name correctly – Mike!).

First we stopped at the most hot dog stand in the city. . .Bill Clinton had even eaten there.  But, no, that’s NOT the history the above headline refers to.  By the way, people will tell you that hot dogs in Iceland are the best they’ve ever had.  Carol and I are not those people.  It was fine, but not exactly life-altering.  A life-changing hot dog is one at a baseball game with a beer on a hot day.  Now that’s the best hot dog in the world!

After that, we took a look from a pier at the waterside of the opera house, then fired up the GPS to walk to Hofdi house.  Carol thought she had spotted it when we left town at the beginning of the week, and it turns out she had.  It was pleasant 1.2 mile walk along the coastline path, which has several very cool sculptures along it.

And then we got to Hofdi house, which is where the famed 1986 summit between President Ronald Wilson Reagan (aka the Guy Who Won the Cold War, aka the Guy Who Already Made America Great Again) and Gorbachev.  We walked all around, reading more about the various uses of the house – a few famous Icelanders had lived there (don’t feel bad if you don’t instantly know who they are – by “famous Icelanders” I meant “famous in Iceland).  It had been the French Consulate, then the British Consulate (where it had been visited by Winston Churchill during the war).

It’s a stark setting, hard by the sea, although now it seems out of place, as it is surrounded by new office buildings.  After satisfying our curiousity for seeing where Cold War history was made, we walked back to City Centre, stopping for a snack at a bakery, then taking the three minutes to tour the Lutheran Cathedral, which is NOT Hallgrimsjakirk, believe it or not!  (I know, you are shocked!  I bet your jaw is hanging down in surprise right now!).

A bit later on after a couple of conference calls, we had a nice group dinner (sans Rich and Meg, who were finally wrapping up at the hospital).  Rich did have to return to the States for emergency surgery.  They headed back to the hotel (understandably), where we met them in the hotel bar.  As is typical Rich and Meg, they had already made friends with everyone sitting around them at the bar. . .heck, they even made friends with Red Sox fans (don’t worry, I shook that news off okay!).

We had an early morning flight to Oslo, so we finally headed upstairs around 11:30pm for the night.