Reykjavik's Summer Love

Reykajik has the feel of a town burning with summer love. The streets are filled with Icelanders and visitors soaking up warmth and wine. Skateboarders zip into the towns central plaza. Cyclists and joggers pound the harborside path long beyond the hour that working people should have gone home. The thin grass glows with the ravenous emerald of the short-lived: relentless and fleeting. The sun may last long tonight, but summer is waning already, and even the plants and the Icelandic ponies know it.

11 p.m. The sun is still bright enough to wash the top of the spectacular concrete Hallgrimskirja church and the upper stories of the downtown hotels – none of them more than a few stories – in gold. If the sun does set here, I won’t be awake to see it.