Well, this is the last day so this will be a low key day without much to do. This morning we went on a Reykjavik walking tour of about two hours.
The tour is done by a history major at the university so they are pretty knowledgeable. Things like parliament, oldest street, neighborhood, house, old buildings, governmental offices and comments on how Iceland works were covered. They have what they call the Scandinavian Welfare system here as in the other Scandinavian countries. Taxes are quite high – income tax starts at 35% and goes up to about 47%! But what this gets you is free health care and education, education from 1st grade through Ph.D. or whatever. Healthcare there may be a waiting period depending on the procedure so an issue there but ALL are covered – children, old people, homeless – everybody. If you need a procedure that cannot be done in Iceland and you have to go to Boston MA, Sweden, Denmark, where ever, it is still covered by the state! Unemployment is about 2.2% but even the unemployed get coverage. Was told that about 35% of the homeless have a college degree. Really is aggravating to me that we (US) is the richest country in the world and all Congress seems to do is to try and not give coverage to the underprivileged. As our guide mentioned, no system is perfect but they do like what they have. She was quite good – especially as it was a free tour – donations accepted.
This afternoon went looking for a football jersey but nowhere to be found. The sports store at the largest mall in the country said it will be two weeks before they will have any. All sold out from the team’s success in Euro2016. So went on Amazon and guess what – can get what I want at about 1/2 the local price, so will do that.
For lunch went to a local hotdog stand – a fixture of Iceland and had an Icelandic hotdog – not bad.
This afternoon Patricia and I went our separate ways to do what we wanted and perhaps get a souvenir. I just wandered around the city and the suburbs looking at houses, buildings, etc. Patricia got her souvenir, a tee shirt. For supper we went to Primos for a final pizza – yes pizza as they really do a marvelous job. So that was about it then back to the hotel, finished packing and early to bed as we get up about 0415 to find a plane.
Has been a marvelous vacation and very highly recommended!
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