[This is part 1 of our Stensaas Family vacation to Europe. I like to post on social media for family and friends, but mainly because it will help me, Bridget and the boys remember this trip far into the future.]

Icelandair offers a wonderful perk that Bridget and I took advantage of 19 years ago on our Honeymoon to Iceland (Norway, Sweden, Finland). You can buy your ticket to anywhere in Europe that Icelandair flies, and get a free layover in Iceland! And they still offer this today.

We arrived in Keflavik, Iceland at 6am local time…but our bodies really felt like it was 1am…and we were exhausted. But it was a 2 ½ hour drive to our cabin and we couldn’t check in to 3pm so exploring Reykjavik was the sensible way to start the day. Coffee latte and cake at a little inner-city café started the “morning.”

I might as well warn you right now…I love church architecture! From ultra-modern design to mideival cathedrals to rural white-steepled chapels to the ancient post-Viking stave “kyrkke” in Norway.

So we headed over to the immensely impressive Hallgrímskirkja, a Lutheran church dedicated to Icelandic poet and clergyman  Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674). Over 240-feet tall and designed by Icelandic architect Guðjón Samúelsson‘ in 1937 to mirror the mountains, glaciers, and especially the cooled lava rock formations called columnar joining such as those found at Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach.

It took FOUR decades to complete. Begun in 1945, the church wasn’t completed until 1986. It is a mesmerizing design, not to mention picturesque. I have never been able to go inside, and today was no different. A scheduled church event was going on so no general admittance. Some day!

Leif Erikkson steadfastly gazes west toward his destiny of Greenland and North America from the church’s courtyard. Sculpted by Alexander Calder (father of Sandy Calder the “mobile artist”) this iconic bronze was a gift from the United States in 1932 to commemorate the 1,000 year anniversary of the “Althing,” the world’s longest running  parliamentary gathering that began in about 930AD. This was still in the Viking era and villagers, farmers, and townspeople would all gather in spring at Þingvellir (28 miles from the future Reykjavik) to air their grievences and legal issues before a “lawspeaker” and 39 district Chieftans. It was a Supreme Court of sorts and peacefully solved many serious (and probably not so serious) issues of the times.

NEXT: “The Pearl” and the Lave tube.