What Makes Reykjavik One of the World’s Most Unique Cities?

This is Alan Hopper TV, coming to you from Reykjavik, Iceland. Let's do this travel guide. I'm going to go on the circle, the golden circle, and I'm going to go to some of the museums and show you guys around. Let's begin. Alright, so we are here at the Sky Lagoon. I'm going to show you guys what they've got going on. They've got the 7-step plunge, you can see, steam, body scrub, cold mist, sauna, shower lagoon. Alright, so we are going in. Yeah, it was around $70, it was actually $8,500, $8,500 Icelandic kronis, or whatever they're called, crowns, and that came out to around like $70 or $80 bucks, but then they offer that 7-step plunge, it's called the Pure, and that ends up being like $2,000 more, so like $30 more or something like that, but I'm happy with just the actual geothermal here, and it is hot, but it's not too hot, just like a sauna, warm. This is a chilly Icelandic evening. Here we've got a coffee bar and a regular bar. I'm going to pull up and get a beer. It's all that fun. Salmon, herring, it's all raw, or pickled. Alright, here we are on the lake waterfront. I'm actually going to the National Museum of Iceland now, which will be interesting. Alright, the National Museum of Iceland. Let's go inside. Here's the pricing, $2,500 ISK, which is around $20. The museum here, look at that shield. Really, right here is the city center. You've got the main road right here, nice park, and right over there is the waterfront. We're going on the Golden Circle tour. I'm amazed at how good the weather is today. It's phenomenal. Let's see, we're looking for a bus stop at the city hall, and we have arrived at our first destination, and I have no idea how to say it. It's on the Golden Circle, though. Tingoville. Sorry? It's Tingoville? Tingvellir. Oh, we're sitting on the tectonic plates. This is where North America and Europe meet. Oh, wow, two tectonic plates. So now we are walking down the hill. The old Viking parliament was here. Then they moved it to Reykjavik. Wow, we are walking right through tectonic plates right now. North America, Europe. Beautiful weather. It's like Yellowstone out here. Lots of wildlife out here. Do you know in Iceland they eat whale and puffin, birds? I mean, what do you need out here? We've got a church, some houses there. This is actually a national park. I see lots of ducks. So far, no puffin. Just duck. Okay, we are coming up to a waterfall here. It's really hard for me to pronounce all the names. So if at any given point you know how to say the name, you can comment below and tell us. But I'll do my best. What have we got going on here? I wonder where this water is coming from. Fairy ponds. I've got another waterfall up here. Let's see if I can see it. Okay, this isn't resting up here. Oh, wow. What a fall. Okay, we are at the geyser now. So we are going to go up here and see what's going on. That geyser right there is awesome. Every once in a while it shoots off. You've got to be able to time it. We'll check again. See if we can get it. Hiking up to the top of this hill here. Kind of see where we are going. Boiling hot. Pretty nice hike you've got here. You can see we've hiked quite a ways already. What have we got going on over there? Okay. They are really moving it, huh? These flowers don't have a smell to them. There's many of them, but no smell. Maybe they are like a weed. Yeah, I think we are up top here. Horses. Horsies. Hello. Hungry. Alright, now we've made it to Gold Falls. It's basically translated to Gold Falls. Gold Foss. Now why they call it Gold, they don't know, but the Vikings may have found gold here. Or it's just because it's golden at sunset. The colors. Let's see, it's one of the biggest in Iceland. I think it is the biggest. We are on our way. Oh man. Oh, got a big one here, huh? You can hear it. Oh, oh wow. Let's get another angle here. Gold Falls. Oh, there it is. It's a canyon. It looks cool in the winter, but it's actually closed in winter, so we'll go take a look right now. Looks like you can swim here. Hmm, very cool. So here we are at the church. It's a modern cathedral here. Modern church, I should say. And right there they have a statue of Leif Erikson that actually reads that he was the discoverer or the person who found Vinland and the United States of America. It's a cafe. We're just walking down towards the waterfront now. It's like a hill where the church is. And everything is downhill or uphill depending on which way you're going from that. Right now I'm going downhill because I'm going towards the water. If you're going towards the church it's uphill. Lagavere. There's the water. I'm actually going to take this road here because it looks cool. There's a lot of walking areas around Reykjavik. It's actually known for its nightclubs. It's actually... What time is it? I think it's about 11? It's like 11 or 11.30 right now in the morning. Yeah, 11.38 in the morning. On June 3rd. It's about 50 degrees out. The thing is yes, it's a little bit brisk but if you walk a lot you can actually get kind of hot. Like humid. Stroll around. It's my first time in Reykjavik. Iceland. Ever. New country for me. I always like going to new places. I don't think I've been to a place like this before. Upon arrival at the bay I originally felt as though it reminded me of Anchorage, Alaska a little bit. But as I walk around it's not really like Anchorage. So as it stands now this might just be in a league of its own. But I'm headed towards Norway. So maybe this is just a Scandinavian style. Which would be OK with me. It's up in meaning to get around to Scandinavia. I like how you can just walk everywhere. And you don't need a car or taxi. Taxis can be expensive actually. The airport is so far away from Reykjavik. And the reason for that is because it's a volcanic island. They had to like find, they can't just clear a flat area with lava. They have to like find a flat area and then kind of manage that. But most of Iceland is just rolling hills and lava. So they found a big flat area. That's where they built the airport. Of course they had to still use What do we got here? OK. That's the way up the hill to the church. Still use backfill dirt to flatten it. And the airport to be honest with you is too small for the amount of tourists that they get here. 20 years ago this was a sleepy town. In the last 20 years Iceland just keeps getting more and more popular. Like literally just overnight Iceland is blowing up into a major tourist hub. It didn't used to be like that. It's only got you know 330,000 people live here on the whole island. Reykjavik is 230,000. This is down here where my hotel is. I actually kind of like the area that I'm at. But yeah, this whole area you just walk it. It's quite busy.