Day 4. Travel to Akureyri

Overview. Today's goal was to travel to Akureyri, so that tomorrow (August 1) we could visit the Diamond Circle.  It's a long drive, and it's a waste of a day if we don't visit something on our way. I chose to explore the valley/lava field in the Reykholt area, and we visited Vidgelmir Cave and the two waterfalls: Hraunfossar and Bandarfossar  waterfalls located next to each other.  We then stopped by Reykholt for a few minutes, before driving to Akureyri.

Weather. Best day thus far. Clear skies throughout, and temperatures around 20-25 Celsius around Reykholt, and around 18 Celsius in Akureyri.

Vidglemir Cave.  We were supposed to wake up at 6am and be out by 8am. So, of course we (and I am the main culprit here) woke up at 8 and were out of the house by 10.  What followed was a roughly two-hour drive to  Vidgelmir Cave. It started really cool, with a five-kilometer long tunnel under Hvalfjordur.  It ended with a 13 km drive on gravel. The car is now covered in dust.  The drive itself was a bit of a bumpy ride along a huge lava field. 

Lava field around Vigdelmir Cave

We arrived around 11:50, the next tour was at noon, but someone bought the last three tickets to that tour right in front of us, so we got the tickets for the 1pm tour and spend the hour on an impromptu picnic followed by catching up on social networking.

More lava.

The tour involved a 300 meter walk along the lava field towards the mouth of the cave - Iceland's longest lava tube cave, and a 600 meter walk inside the cave, which indeed, is a lava tube. There is a lot of small growth along the walls, the floor and the ceiling of the cave, with small stalactites and stalagmites everywhere. 

Vidgelmir cave: the entrance.

Vidgelmir cave: colors on the ceiling.

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Vidgelmir cave: fragment of the ceiling.

Vidgelmir cave: a wall covered in what the guide said was called "chocolate cake".

Vidgelmir cave, ceiling formations (small stalactites).

The tour ended 600 meters into the cave with the guide turning off all the light and asking us to turn off our helmet lights. We then spent a few minutes in complete darkness.

The waterfalls.  The Hraunfossar/Barnafossar waterfalls are located on the way back from the cave - we pretty much passed their location when we drove to the cave. I saw some pictures of Hraunfossar, but they barely prepared me for this absolutely unique, and stunningly beautiful waterfall. I am not certain where the water is coming (some underground system), but unlike most "normal" waterfalls that are simply a change in elevation of the river bed, Hraunfossar consists of a 100+ - meter curtain of water falling alongside one of the riverbanks. 

The panorama of Hraunfossar

It is impossible to capture the entire waterfall in a single shot, unless using panorama, like above. But individual components of the waterfall are beautify all by themselves.

View of Hraunfossar from just upstream

Unlike Hraunfossar, Barnafossar is a change in the elevation of the riverbed. It is not easy to observe, and it is more like glorified white water than a proper waterfall (the drop in elevation is not sudden but is gradual). But it takes place in a very narrow space, and the water becomes wild.

Barnafossar.

Barnafossar - the water runs under an arch that connects both banks of the river.

Barnafossar: wild water.

Reykholt.  We passed Reykholt on our way to the cave, so now it's just returning back towards the Akureyri road. Google maps brings us to a gravel lot behind the Reykholt complex, but with a clear beeline for Snorri's hot spring pool.

Snorri's hot spring pool with hot water.

Snorri's pool.

We walk around the site, and discover a curious building that looks like the headquarters of the regional Communist Party committee back in Soviet days, complete with a statue in front of it.

Comrade Snorri!

Snorri Strulson's monument.

We walk a bit more, kids are tired and want sodas, so we say goodbye to the Reykholt complex without visiting the museum (I was somewhat taken aback by the 200 krona cover charge to the museum restroom - this is just poor taste), make a quick stop at a nearby N1 station, and head to Akureyri.

Reykholt: the church.

Reykholt: the museum.

Reykholt: the surrounding vista (and our car).

Akureyri.  I wish we had all the time in the world, because somewhere around the end of the first hour of our trek to Akureyri it occurs to me that one can just stop the car at an random place, and take absolutely astounding pictures... Someone, with more time is probably doing just that. The drive to Akureyri goes through valleys, mountains, tundra, fjords, and it features absolutely stunning scenery along the way. The road is more or less empty, and we make reasonable time, arriving to our Airbnb in Akureyri at 8pm on the nose. We immediately turn and head downtwon Akureyri, for dinner, because kids are hungry and our food supplies are largely snacks.

Downtown Akureyri at 10pm.

Unlike our usual attempts to find a place to eat, which can last hours, span kilometers, and go through dozens of restaurants, we zero in on the place right away: a restaurant with a very straightforward name "Akureyri Fish".

Akureyri Fish Restaurant.

The younger one does not like fish, but they have a chicken burger on the menu, so we go in. The place is packed, but the staff stretches the orders so that by the time we are at the counter ordering food, a four-person table has cleared and we take it. Olga and the older kid have fish and chips, the younger one gets his chicken burger, and I go for Plokkfiskur described as "traditional Icelandic mashed cod dish".

Plokkfiskur topped with Bernaise sauce and served with rye bread.

The restaurant also appears to have the traditional Icelandic rotten shark, but we decide against ordering it.  Plokkfiskur turns out to be quite tasty - it is basically pulled cod mixed with potatoes and immersed in milk and butter.  The food hits everyone's spot. It's 10pm when we get out of the restaurant, and take a short stroll along the embankment.

Snow-capped mountains above Akureyri.

A whale-watching ship. 

A view towards the end of the fjord.

More ships in the harbor.

Sunset in Akureyri.

Volga. A Russian car (this one was probably made in 1990s) that participated in an antique car show.

And that's pretty much it. We head home and head to beds.

Driving.  486 kilometers based on odometer readings.

Walking. We slacked today. Google Fit clocked me at 7,950 steps. Which rings true - we walked for a bit around the cave, but the other two sites we visited - we did not walk much there.

Day 5 plan.  The general idea is to hit the Diamond Circle. But which specific locations? I just discovered that the only way it is a circle is if we take a 50km gravel road, which is not something I am looking forward to doing. So, tomorrow we will decide what the exact itinerary is.

Day 3. July 30. Reykjavik.

Overview.  Days spent walking in a town, rather than driving around must be present in any itinerary, because too many back-to-back long driving trips are exhausting. So, our third day is a "stay in town" day, in anticipation of a three day marathon around West and North of Iceland. Morning was the Settlement Museum, afternoon - walking around downtown, late afternoon - thrift stores (yes, thrift stores), and in the evening, the three out of four of us went to the top of  Hallgrimskirkja before heading home.  This report is significantly shorter than the previous one.

Weather. Collaborated somewhat. Morning was very dull and grey, with leaden skies that reflected and diffused all the light and made it hard to take nice photos. Afternoon added some rain to it while we were driving. But evening was beautiful   with the skies clearing just enough to create beautiful spotlights just in time for  the golden hour.  The temperatures stayed around 15 Celcius most of the day, although in the afternoon the car was showing (quite without any support) about 25 Celcius. Like yesterday reported high of 33 degrees Celcius, I do not believe those numbers. 

The Settlement Museum.  We took our time getting out of the house, and parked downtown around 10:40am. Took a leisurely stroll from the parking garage to Old Town (Centre City), walked past the Allthing building (old building, the size of a good mansion or a small palace with a modern annex), and found the Settlement Museum at the end of the street. We were five minutes late for a tour, but the museum is organized in a way that allowed us to catch up with the tour, so we spent about 40 minutes following the guide around the space. 

Allthing: the parliament house.

The Settlement Museum

The museum itself is organized around a longhouse dig smack in the middle of Reykjavik. The house was part of a farm that stretched between the sea and a small lake, that used to be a lagoon. The longhouse is fascinating. The guide was discussing things I already knew from reading about the history of Iceland, but the younger kid did not know too much about the Settlement, so it should have been educational for him. The museum has a nice 3d reconstruction of how the house would have looked like, layer by layer. Watching this, and walking around the longhouse and looking at the artifacts dug out -- not too many -- the longhouse was abandoned after about 80 years of use, was great. 

Due to how lighting is organized inside the museum, it is difficult to get a nice shot of the entire longhouse. This and the next picture are probably the best ones I could get.

Portion of the  longhouse.

Some of the excavated goods: an axe, a key, an arrowhead, and some fishhooks.

More excavated goods, including some glass buttons.

Reykjavik. After the museum, everyone else went for coffee, while I went to a small building next door (Reykjavik's oldest surviving building, I think) and saw a small exhibition of photographs from 1918.

The 1918 photo exhibit hall rumored to be the oldest standing building in Reykjavik (note, there is a modern annex behind it as well).

Pictures of pictures #1: Reykjavik in 1918.

Pictures of pictures #2. Reykjavik in 1918.

Pictures of pictures #3: Reykjavik in 1918.

  I then rejoined the family at a coffee shop off Ingolfur Square. We then walked past the closed flea market (open on Saturday - that's our morning destination for that day), and through the streets of Old Town returned back to Laugavegur and walked it all the way to the other end, where, among other things, live vinyl shops, coffee shops, Shawarma King (where we had our lunch), a store called Kvartyra #49  (clothing boutique run by a Russian expat and her Icelandic husband, selling some Russian fashion), we discovered something called The Icelandic Museum of Phallology, which is, yes, all about penises. The older kid read that it is a "legit" museum, and they have an entire whale penis in their collection.  

Retro Reykjavik

Kvartyra No 49 selling Sputnik 1985 sweaters.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum.

Thrift stores. There are a couple of actual thrift stores (rather than second-hand clothing shops) at the end of Laugavegur. We have learned that some of the best souvenirs about the places we visit can be had for pennies on the dollar in the thrift stores, so they are now part of a usual city crawl. In the Red Cross store on Laugavegur I found a nice ceramic tile depicting the Thingvallir church.   Inspired, we looked up the addresses of a couple more places outside the downtown course, and at around 4pm (time flies like crazy), set out of downtown to find them. The first store, ABC, was impressive - large, with excellent selection of stuff. I got a framed picture of a fishing trawler, and the older kid quite literally mined some pins of Iceland from a large and otherwise boring box with bijouterie. The second store was part of a mini-mall, and not that interesting.

Music store. The older kid looked up a music instrument store  Tonastothin, close to downtown, and the younger kid hearing that got interested. So, we got there about 25 minutes before closing. The place has a really good selection of Gretch guitars, but no Fenders of Gibsons (they have some good-looking Epiphones though).  The younger one looked at their selection of trumpets, and then approached one of the sales people about a mouthpiece. Turned out, the person approached was a trumpet player himself. He pulled out the mouthpieces, and for a few minutes the younger one was trying them out, eventually settling on a 3C piece from England, that we got a massive price break on. The kid also looked at trumpets - there are some nice inexpensive ones there.

The Tower. Final stop along the way today was the tower of  Hallgrimskirkja. I only found out in the morning that one could go up there.  The older kid stayed on the ground, the remaining three of us went up, I got a chance to snap a few hundred pictures of sweeping panoramas. Olga and the younger kid left earlier and went to discover local ice cream (score - they have something called Extreme Farmer's Cream, which is what it sound like - it's Icelandic analogue of Coldstone's Sweet Cream, and Britain's Clotted Cream ice creams). 

Views of Reykjavik  and beyond.

 In the meantime, I took my time with the pictures, and then took a few outside of the cathedral, just as the golden hour sun started shining its spotlights on the tower. The pictures of the cathedral, and of the statue in front of it have gotten much better.

Leif Eriksson properly lit.

Spotlight shines on Helgrimskirkja.

Golden hour did not disappoint.

And that's just it. Walked to the car, drove home, where I collapsed until the wee hours of morning.

Driving. Some trivial amounts of back and forth - probably about 40 km around town.

Walking.  Google fit claims 14,094 steps - another good day of walking.

Day 4 plan.  We are driving to Akureyri all day. The plan currently calls for exploring the waterfalls and caves around Reynholt, and a stop at Reykholt.  We can then hit some coastal areas out west on our way back.