Reykjavik, last stage before departure.

The visit to the Icelandic capital deliberately coincided with the end of this unforgettable journey because, in our opinion, to grasp its spirit it was first necessary to go around the island to see the type of territory that Icelanders live with every day. We can define Reykjavik as an ordered microcosm, immersed in a chaos where natural elements struggle to overwhelm each other, giving spectacular and violent manifestations of their presence on the planet. The capital is a city with two faces, one historical and the other contemporary, which blend together, giving the visitor a modern urban context, with a lot of attention to the "stylistically beautiful".

In the area that runs along the fjord, the city is full of buildings with minimalist geometric shapes, communicating with each other, where steel, glass, wood and concrete are well blended to give the visitor a show of light and shadow.
The main example of this union is the Harpa multipurpose theater and art center, located next to the sea.
This almost maniacal attention to detail can also be seen in the streets, in the cleanliness, in the quality of the services offered, in showing the ultimate goal of a cosmopolitan city: the harmonious union of men.

Speaking of harmony between human beings: walking from the Harpa along the fjord, after about 10 minutes, we noticed a small white colonial-style house, with a perfectly manicured green lawn. It attracted our attention because, as mentioned earlier, the architecture in the theater area was contemporary.
As we got closer, we discovered that the house was called Höfði, and had an incredible history: in 1986 it hosted the Reykjavik Summit, where Reagan and Gorbachev met to start negotiations that later sanctioned the end of the Cold War, and the beginning of a new era of world peace (which we hope will be maintained). 

Wherever you turned, you had the impression of being in a place out of this world, it almost seemed as if you were living the future.

Exactly, a city that anticipates the future, even on a social level. Iceland was one of the first countries in the world to grant universal suffrage, the first country to have a female president, and is one of the very few countries where women in parliament exceed 25%.
While in Italy politicians are debating to create dedicated laws that favor family and work, in Iceland they have already existed for a long time. While a bigoted parliament avoids talking about the equal rights of those it calls different, in Iceland the rights of LBGTQ+ people have been protected since 1996.
They are so accepted that in 2009 Iceland became the first state in the world to have an openly gay president, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir.
A civil avant-garde that was evident almost everywhere in the capital: in the city center, where the historic buildings symbolized a strong attachment to the roots of the past, streets painted in rainbow colors ran along the pedestrian areas. 

As mentioned earlier, a city that wants to keep its origins alive and take them into the future.
Walking in an architectural context of this kind bordered on utopia, and the tourist was always helped to understand this double meaning thanks to the illustrative panels that were positioned in every corner.
In the frame of all this there were an infinity of ethnic restaurants, a sign of a cosmopolitan country, which appeared neatly in the most characteristic places, flanked by shops that dealt with art, antiques and books. This is the image that the capital of Iceland left imprinted in our mint: an orderly world open to the future that coexists with the primordial chaos of the elements, on a land of fire and ice, on the edge of the world.

Goodbye Iceland.