![\"mediangeese\"](\"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/mediangeese.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI also encountered this little bird at the waterfront:<\/p>\n
I believe it’s a starling.\u00a0 In this photo it’s poking into a seawall, presumably trying to get some food.<\/p>\n After dropping the bike off, I walked back toward my lodging, taking in some more of the city on my way, as I did not have to hurry.<\/p>\n A couple of days earlier, I had visited the home of the original Althing, the gathering of the country’s leaders to make law.\u00a0 The Althing still exists, but it meets in a building in Reykjavik – this building, to be exact:<\/p>\n It’s labeled on this side section:<\/p>\n As are the spaces on the street in front of it:<\/p>\n That third letter is the letter thorn, by the way, which has a soft ‘th’ sound.\u00a0 I’ve been transliterating it to ‘th’ in Althing and Thingvellir, among other words.<\/p>\n I thought this fountain was neat looking:<\/p>\n And yes, that is a hot dog stand in the background – it’s supposedly quite popular.<\/p>\n I came across some interesting sculptures on my way east through the city:<\/p>\n Not sure what to make of these folks:<\/p>\n or these polar bears:<\/p>\n I saw similar stuffed bears in chains in front of other stores.\u00a0 It’s some kind of thing…<\/p>\n At the far end of the street was one sight I wanted to make sure to go by:<\/p>\n It is Hallgr\u00edmskirkja, the largest church in Iceland, and of unusual architecture:<\/p>\n There is a statue out front of Leif Ericsson<\/a> out front:<\/p>\n This inscription is above the door:<\/p>\n The side view:<\/p>\n I did not go inside, but I did encounter another friendly cat outside the church before I moved on:<\/p>\n I got back to the apartment and packed up my stuff, then took a city bus to the bus station.\u00a0 There I had some lunch (more lamb) and waited for the bus to the airport.<\/p>\n It had been dry that morning, and for a couple of days before, but it started raining by the time I got to the airport, just as it had been raining when I arrived in the country.<\/p>\n Getting my bags checked required waiting a while in line, because the luggage conveyer belt at the check-in counter had broken down.\u00a0 Eventually some carts were brought to move the luggage through, and I was able to head for the gate.<\/p>\n On the flight to London, I watched an Icelandic documentary called Electric Reykjavik<\/em>, about the electronic music scene there.<\/p>\n The plane flew southward over the British Isles, and I was able to glimpse some thin white things in Scotland or Northern England.\u00a0 I took as best a picture as I could with my phone:<\/p>\n They’re right in the center of the image.\u00a0 I was able to figure out pretty quickly what they were, because I could see blades turning.\u00a0 Apparently, windmills are visible from tens of thousands of feet in the air.<\/p>\n I arrived fine in Heathrow airport, and took a bus from there to Reading train station.\u00a0 From there it was a short train ride to Didcot, where I was staying with a friend for a couple of nights.\u00a0 The next day, she’d be showing me around Oxford.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On my last morning in Iceland I got up somewhat early so I could return my rented bike (\u00d3li Stef).\u00a0 I headed for the Reykjavik waterfront along the city’s bike paths, and partway there, I noticed geese in the median strip of the road (click photo to embiggen): I also encountered this little bird at … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,19,2,20,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2462,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2438\/revisions\/2462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seakingdom.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n