Expected weather: Hi 53F, Cloudy

Population: 138,875 (city) / 248,000 (Region) / 352,721 (Country)

Our journey with Viking is sadly over and we disembarked after one last breakfast. We headed to our hotels (long story how we ended up at separate hotels that I won’t go into here), checked in, left our bags, and met back up to explore downtown Reykjavik for the day. Well, it was supposed to be that simple. We disembarked around 8:45 – everyone had to be off by 9am – so we weren’t exactly the last. However, we should have gotten off about 5 minutes earlier… We reached the spot for the black tagged luggage – and I spotted my distinctive olive green eBag and walked over to it – only it didn’t look quite right. Sure enough, I checked the luggage tag and it was not my name! I looked again in the black tag section and did not see another like it. I immediately knew what had happened – for the first time in probably 15 years that I’ve used that bag (or its predecessor) someone else had the same bag. Only the one remaining was the next size larger than mine. Oh my! I immediately told the porter what I thought had happened. He grabbed that bag and said, “Let’s go outside and look for yours!”. Well, it was to no avail – we checked everyone waiting in the terminal – ran outside to the taxi and private pick-up, still no luck. The Viking person got involved at that point and Viking started trying to contact the guest as did I since her phone number was on the tag. I was praying that she wasn’t headed directly to the airport. Anyway, several minutes after I called and left a voicemail, I had the good sense to also text her. She responded shortly thereafter. She was on a mini-bus – I don’t know if they were headed directly to their hotels or out on a tour, but the driver and I guess the rest of the people she was with agreed to return to the port terminal and we exchanged bags about twenty minutes later! So, all good in the end. Next time that I’m going with Viking – I’m using a different luggage tag as we’d both placed our red Viking tags in the same place. The poor lady was so embarrassed, while she should have realized “her” bag was too small, she was probably like me having never seen another similar bag while traveling and didn’t even think. Just another reminder to always check that the bag you grab from the plane carousel or the cruise terminal is actually yours!

By the time we arrived at our hotel an hour later than we planned, we were able to get checked into our hotel room early – good thing as I needed to add layers (and now thankful to have my full option of clothes) – the temp was as expected and it was actually sunny, but the wind was terrible. We grabbed a cab to Keith’s and Paula’s hotel in the downtown area and we walked around exploring the central area – found the rainbow street, walked up to the iconic Hallgrímskirkja and went up the tower for views, then walked back the other side of the street back to the Handknitting Association of Iceland (guaranteed not made in China!). Back in the vicinity of the hotel, we went in and got a recommendation for lunch at Apotek (in a beautiful old pharmacy) a few blocks away. After a fantastic and expensive (though we were prepared for that) lunch, we headed towards the old harbor and Aurora Reykjavik, The Northern Lights Center. This was an incredibly well-done museum, where you used your phone as a listening device using the QR codes at each area. It concluded in a dark theater with a film running on loop showing various northern lights dancing all around Iceland. It was mesmerizing – I hope we get a glimpse, but I don’t know if we can stay awake as long and full as our days have been!

As we walked back toward the hotel, I think all of our devices hit 10,000 steps, and we were tired. We decided it was time for a late afternoon game of cards before going to dinner. However, we realized the cards were back at our hotel a mile and a half away. No problem, we were in the middle of all the “Puffin” stores (the tourist souvenir shops) and figured we could find some pretty quickly to buy. After a couple of games, we decided it was time to find a light dinner as we’d eaten “big” at lunch, and we settled on an Italian place a block or so away for pizzas. Now, we were full again and tired, so we grabbed a cab back to our hotel and got ready for a big South Coast tour the following day.