These days I’m less excited about traveling for sights and more interested in experiencing uniquely specific culture. In Reykjavik, its corrugated iron houses are just this special sort of thing I love.

These houses started out as wood and then they were covered with sheets of corrugated iron. I’m sure you’ve gone out on a blustery day and thrown on a windbreaker over your outfit—that’s what’s going on here too. Wood alone is just not going to a match for Iceland’s climate.

Here’s a close up of an iron sheet meeting a baseboard.

• 

I read somewhere that corrugated iron has to cure for a while before it is painted, which must be why there a lot of plain iron-gray buildings around Reykjavik.

Not to worry, though, these buildings don’t stay dull looking for long.

I like the simple shapes combined with the bright colors.

• 

Not cute enough for you? Let me tell you about the cats.

Cats in the windows of the corrugated-covered houses.

Cats lounging on sidewalks in front of the houses, not giving any fudge about you, human who lives in a boring brick or wooden house.

HOB and I have never been on a trip where we’ve spent so long in one city. And Reykjavik is a small city.

When we got back someone asked me if I got bored.

I didn’t get bored. Every time we went for a walk I wanted to keep going around a new corner, looking for more of these corrugated houses, familiar in materials to the grain elevators and other strictly utilitarian structures from the midwestern US, but so much more charming in their practical cheeriness.

How we got to Reykjavik: flight from Chicago.

Where we slept: Baldursbrá Apartment Laugarvegur.  Price: €111 for a double (including food).  Recommended: yes.