With a slow, lazy start to the first morning of 2017, everyone was pretty much up by noon, with only a few headaches and hoarse voices. We ate from the eggs, butter, toast, Skyr (yogurt), and granola we'd collected, then bundled up for a temperature hovering around 35 instead of 25 like last night.
We got to Hallgrimskirkja at 3pm, right as service was letting out. We were in the queue to enter when the only other person we know in Iceland (the girl from the plane) left the church! Mark had gotten her info the day before, so we talked briefly about meeting up later and filed into the church.
The church met the generalization we'd gotten the day before from Rachel's friend as "70s minimalist". The pews were comfy as we warmed up looking at the organ and the slitted windows with a lot of step structure from the outside echoed inside.
The Sun Explorer is a sculpture of a boat along the shore on the north side of downtown Reykjavik. We walked down the steep (but not as slippery) hill to the shore, then vogued in front of it for a while as the sun "set."
We wandered back up to the main drag to get to our only true plan of the day - "Pearls of Icelandic Song" at Harpa, a giant concert hall. Rachel's friend met us there with an authentic Icelander in tow and we sat in a slightly chilly auditorium listening to Icelandic Christmas songs while their translations were being projected on the back wall. The foursome that was on stage (two singers, a pianist, and an oboist) gave us a bit of background on each song. Our Icelander confirmed that all the songs were known by him, but we equated his chuckles during some of them as us listening to a choral arrangement of Hickory Dickory Dock - possible, but not how you usually hear it.
With our now-group of 8, dinner was a challenge. We got a pair of tables in a restaurant with some wonderfully plated dishes. Since we were going for the foreign, Mark, Kamila, Tommy, and I split the smoked puffin, the whale mini steaks, and the horse carpaccio. The puffin had a fatty, round taste, with a hint of sea, and great smoked flavors. The whale was in small medallions, and each had a nice sear on the outside with rare, rich meat on the inside - a mild flavor that was more beef than fish. The horse was in sliver-thin slices that might have been raw - the sauces accompanying it made a great, juicy bite of red meat.
The sad part was that all of these were small plates, so the four of us weren't even close to full. The hotdog stand outside was calling, but the veggie burger of sweet potatoes and carrots helped tide us over until we could get there. The table with Alisa, Rachel, and her friends was still working on their main course, so I ordered some cream puffs to put the cherry (or raspberry, creme de leche, and chocolate crunch, as it were) on the meal.
Rachel's friend walked us to Baejarin's hot dog stand - the best hot dogs in Reykjavik according to many guidebooks and the locals we were with! For the others, it was a bit less crazy than the other meats, but the crispy onions, gravy, and mustard made it a different crunchy snack than we know in America.
The girl from the plane ended up catching up with us, and we took the mile walk home past Hallsgrimkirkja and the park with the litter of fireworks. Hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps, games, and an early night, because tomorrow, we dive between the continental plates!
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