Iceland Day 13

I didn’t set an alarm today but I couldn’t sleep in anyway.

After breakfast, I headed to the main street nearby. My hotel is close to the main downtown area, but not right in the thick of things which is good. I wanted to check out some of the shops that had been closed in the evening. One of them was a marvelous craft store where I found some unique Icelandic rocks that have holes drilled through them. They will make a great necklace!

I did a bit more browsing, then walked over to the meeting point for a walking tour. The guide was a young entrepreneur who gives ‘free’ walking tours twice daily. If you like it, you pay. I hope everyone did as I thought he was quite good.

The tour was about 75 minutes long and covered several important buildings, statues and landmarks in the downtown area. Not only did the guide know his history well, but he gave us an insight into the psyche of the locals. He touched on many interesting topics including politics, finance, and education. While we were in front of the government buildings he noticed that something was going on. He kept an eye out as he was talking then pointed out the Prime Minister of Iceland to us!

After the tour I grabbed another hotdog from Baejarins Beztu Pylsur again. I wasn’t super hungry but needed something to tide me over. Reykjavik has a Photography Museum which is located in the city library. Admission was free – can’t beat that! I was really looking forward to seeing a good photography exhibit but I was sorely disappointed. The show that was on display was mostly photos of motorcycle dudes from the southern U.S. That’s not what I expected to see in Iceland! Oh well, at least the price was right.

My next stop was an art museum. I was really hoping for some more traditional type of art but I guess Icelandic artists are really ‘out there’. I found the building quite interesting at any rate!

I found the graffiti more to my liking than the ‘art’ in the museums.

Reykjavik is definitely a city of contrasts as evidenced by the statue pictured below. Check out the man with a briefcase and a boulder on the top half of his body compared to the traditional architecture of the church in the background. It hard to label Reykjavik!

At 3 PM I headed over to catch a free shuttle to Reykjavik’s largest mall. I hadn’t had much chance for shopping and wanted to pick something up for the house and cat sitter, lawn mower, etc.  Unfortunately I got my times wrong and missed the van to the mall I wanted to see. Instead I went to Smaralind Mall. It wasn’t quite what I expected….more of a European version of West Edmonton Mall! I wasn’t in the market for high fashion or ultra-stylish clunky footwear. After scoping it out I bought chocolate soft-serve ice cream and took the shuttle back downtown.

I went back to the hotel to do web check-in for tomorrow’s flight and also for a change of footwear. The touristy shops nearby had more of what I was looking for and I managed to spend the last of my kronas. When window shopping, there was an interesting store window display that kept drawing me but it was always closed. Finally I found it open and what a cool place! I found some neat gift items and postcards. When I complimented the owner on his store, he told me that some of the postcards were his own photography and some of the card designs were his original art that he turned into t-shirts. And yes, that cat sign is coming home with me!

All that leg work got me hungry as my famous hotdog wasn’t all that substantial. Finding cheap and cheerful in Iceland can be a challenge but it can be done. I found a nifty little Moroccan place called Kebab Grill and enjoyed a lamb and veggie pita. It was a bit spicier than I usually go for, but it was good.

I am back at the hotel early. I need to do postcards and get my suitcase organized for the last time! 

Iceland Day 12

Happy Canada Day to all my friends back home!

Today was the last official day of the tour. One thing I like about exploring Iceland is that since the days are so long, we get a later start in the morning. 10 AM works for me…haha! We had a short 15 minute drive from our hotel over to the Arbaer Open Air Museum.

There are over 20 buildings representing a town square, a village and a farm. They are all very well preserved inside and out. I really liked the sturdily-built sod houses. The church was even a sod one! One of the homes had an attached shed for farm animals.

I was amazed at the short doorways and extremely steep narrow stairways in most of the two story buildings. Yikes! It was almost like using a ladder in some cases.

There was a group of small kids touring the museum. For their enjoyment, there was an old-fashioned go-cart steered with feet and a rope. I was impressed with the ‘engine’ in the back – other kids pushing. They really got that cart moving!

Lunch was at a very popular eating establishment in Reykjavik. It’s called Baejarins Beztu Pylsur. And what do they serve you may ask? Hot dogs! It’s not a sit-down restaurant, just a stand in the downtown area. There are always line-ups and they even have their own Wikipedia entry!!

Our afternoon excursion was to the famous Blue Lagoon. I was expecting a hot pool much the same as the Mineral Baths at Myvatn. The Blue Lagoon is not only more famous, but bigger, with more to do, and at a higher cost of course. (6,500 Icelandic kronas =$55.82 CDN). It was so worth it though.

Upon entry, you were issued a high-tech waterproof bracelet. That was your key to open and close your locker, but there was also a swim-up bar serving alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. To ‘pay’, they scanned your bracelet, then after changing and before exiting, they re-scanned your bracelet and charged you accordingly. Due to the heat and steam, I ordered a raspberry slushy drink (crushed ice with flavoring) to help cool down a bit.

There was an area with tubs of ‘mud’ and a long-handled narrow spoon. You reached in and scooped out the white mud, then put it on your face for 10-15 minutes. It was great fun and I did it 3 times.

There were steam saunas and an extremely powerful waterfall you could stand under. It was like getting a massage, that’s how strong it was. There were quite a few people there but it is a big pool with lots of different areas. Like the Myvatn Mineral Baths, the floor of the pool was natural and uneven. It was mostly smooth but you had to watch your step as you could step on a sharp rock at any moment.

We headed back to Reykavik which was about a 40 minute drive. I hung up my suit and towel and headed out to the main shopping street to explore. Since it was after 6 PM there wasn’t much open but I enjoyed window shopping at any rate.

At 8 PM I met up with the rest of the group for one final get-together as some people had flights to catch later that evening. I ordered myself a fruity drink called “Holy Moly”. After our final good-byes I headed back to the hotel to blog and plan for tomorrow.

I’m on my own again! 

Iceland Day 11

After a nice breakfast at the hotel we sent off to explore Akureyi. 

The city is located at the end of the fjord Eyjafkorour and is surrounded by mountains. Akureyi has a population of about 18,000. It is an important port and fishing centre and enjoys an ice free harbor. A cruise ship had arrived during the night so the town was filled with sightseers. 

Transportation was by foot, and the terrain was quite hilly. I wasn't fond of walking on rocks and uneven ground in previous days, but pavement and concrete isn't the best either. A nearby attraction was the Akureyi Botanical Gardens. 

It is a free public park and is nicely laid out with lots of interesting nooks and crannies. Some of the plants were greenhouse grown but most of them are indigenous to the area. It was surprising to recognize so many of the same plants as we have at home.

Nearby was “old town”, an area with homes of some of the first settlers in the area. The design of the buildings was traditional Icelandic. I especially enjoyed the windows which frequently have beautiful lace curtains. Some of the homes were quite colorful and the wooden trim was beautiful.

The road led me to the main shopping area downtown where I browsed for awhile. I also stopped in at an art gallery which had a most interesting display of life sized wooden characters made from lumber scraps and found things. I especially enjoyed “Mr. Abacus Hat”.

The agenda for the rest of the day was the drive back to Reykjavik which was a 5 and a half hour one. The scenery in Iceland is really quite amazing – rugged, sparsely populated and truly beautiful.

We had a late supper in the restaurant attached to our hotel. I ordered the Arctic char again and it was prepared in a much different way this time – minced on top of miniature sliced potatoes on top of bread, garnished with green apple pieces. Yum!

Iceland Day 10

Well I learned something about myself in Husavik this morning.  I could never ever make a living as a sailor in the Atlantic!

Husavik is a beautiful northern coastal town on the shore of Skjálfandi Bay and is known as the whale capital of Iceland. We arrived just in time for a three hour tour (everybody sing, "a 3 hour tour, a 3 hour tour!"). Our boat was a beautiful old wooden schooner with about 30 passengers. 

On board we were issued heavy duty waterproof coveralls that also served as life jackets.  To put them on, we had to take off our shoes to get our feet through the legs. That's where I made my first mistake - not doing my "waterproof" hiking boot laces back up tightly.  What I didn't count on was the boat taking on so much water and soaking my right boot and sock completely. Wool gets pretty heavy when its wet. And just like rafting and snorkelling, that water is unpleasantly cold, to put it mildly.  

My second mistake was in my choice of seats. I thought that the middle would be a smart choice. I could easily get to where the 'whale action' was or so I thought and it wouldn't be as rough as the bow. As I sat on the end of a bench, the boat began to pitch with such violence that I fell right off and onto the floor. If the floor hasn't been so wet I would have stayed there!

The third thing I did wrong was to leave my Gravol and my motion sickness bracelets tucked away in my suitcase back on shore. I'm not a complete landlubber. I’ve been whale watching on the ocean before in Canada and toured the Galapagos in a small yacht, so I thought I knew what I was in for....NOT! I was good for the first hour or so but then I began to feel quite queasy. Keep your eyes on the land they said, and I tried. They passed around cinnamon buns at the end of the excursion but the thought of food made me ill. I sure wasn’t the only who had a hard time on that trip.

On the plus side, I saw whales…lots of them! They were humpback whales and they were really swimming, jumping and breaching. My plans were to get some good photos but it was all I could do to stay upright as the boat was heaving up and down. I decided my safety was more important than the ‘National Geographic’ shot I had hoped for. My SLR would have got soaked if I had used it, so that was another reason to keep it tucked inside my jacket and get a few 'grab' shots with my point and shoot.

When we returned to shore, it was lunch time. I managed to keep a bowl of Icelandic meat soup down, that,  and a big glass of ginger-ale. The town of Husavik is very picturesque. The harbor is beautiful, there is a lovely old wooden church on the main street, and the mountain behind the town is almost covered with lupins.

We headed towards our next stop for the night, the city of Akureyi. A welcome stop along the way was Godafoss. The sun came out and the falls were spectacular. The height is only 12 meters but the width is 30 meters. The water splits in the middle and goes down 2 sides.  

After Reykjavik, Akureyi is Iceland’s second largest urban area. Our hotel is lovely, and is only a few blocks away from the downtown area where we had supper and browsed in the store windows. Like in Reykjavik, a huge church towers over the town and is a beautiful landmark for miles around.

I hope I don’t dream of the ocean tonight!