Day 10: Last Day. Akranes Lighthouse.

Overview. Our last day in Iceland. To keep ourselves ready for the trip back, we picked one easy-to-reach location,  Akranes, went there, returned back, and spent the rest of the day souvenir shopping (if what we did can be called that).

Akranes: the old and the new lighthouses.

Weather. Continues to please.  It was a bit cloudy and dark in Akranes, so, for example, mountain views from the lighthouse were hard to obtain (as seen from the picture of the Akrafjall mountain below). But by the time we were back to Reykjavik, it was sunny. 14-16 degrees Celcius.  Overall, it's been pretty stable throughout our stay.

Akranes. View of  Akrafjall mountain - the weather is not quite cooperating on this shot.

Akranes. We woke up late, and had a lazy morning. Unlike previous days, we made zero plans last night, so we had to improvise on the spot. We wanted an easy thing to do, nothing strenuous, which, for example invalidated some of the hikes near Reykjavik. Eventually, from the various suggestions for a day trip from Reykjavik we elected to go to Akranes. We have never actually been inside a lighthouse before and the lighthouse in Akranes is easily accessible.

Akranes. The easily-accessible lighthouse.

It is only a 45 minute drive to Akranes, although, "only" is somewhat relative, since as the crow flies, Akranes lighthouse is only 16 miles away according to Google maps. We took the Hvalfjordur Tunnel across the fjord, and turned left toward Akranes.  

Akranes, as seen from the top of the lighthouse.  Industry, old houses, new highrises - all are interspersed.

Akranes is interesting. Old village interspersed with all sorts of industrial buildings.  The lighthouses - the old one, and the new one are on a spit behind some metal sheds and oil tanks.  We parked, got out of the car, bought the tickets to visit the lighthouse and went there.

And homage to Pink Floyd.

There are two lighthouses in Akranes. The old one is only 10 meters tall and is no longer operating. It is right at the tip of  a small cape filled with tidal pools full of dead sea urchins.

Akranes. The Old Lighthouse.

 A bit closer to the parking lot is the new lighthouse, which is (a) operational, and (b) open for visitors.

Akranes. The new lighthouse from the sea side.

The inside of the lighthouse is an exhibition of a photographer - for a mere $155 you can buy a large photograph of somewhere beautiful in Iceland.  The top floor is open, and affords some really nice sights. In good weather, one can see Reykjavik and Keflavik to the south, and Snaelfensnes peninsula to the north. In the sort of weather we were having, the visibility was significantly less, but the panoramas were still impressive.

View from the top of the lighthouse - looking north.

View from the top of the lighthouse. Looking west.

A panoramic view south from the top of the lighthouse.

A panoramic view east from the top of the lighthouse. Akranes, with  Akrafjall at the back. Hvalfjörður on the right, Borgarfjörður on the left..

After visiting the lighthouse, we went for a walk on the spit, reached the old lighthouse, walked around it and took some pictures.

Akranes. The two lighthouses.

 Following that, I drove to a small industrial site where an old ship, Höfrungur AK 91 (which apparently means "Dolphin" in Icelandic) is moored in abandonment. 

Höfrungur in its full derelict beauty.

The lighthouses, as seen from the Hofrungur site.

Höfrungur, moored and abandoned.

Höfrungur: another shot.

We took a few pictures there, and went for some coffee and pastries at a local bakery.

After that, we drove back to Reykjavik.

Reykjavik. The rest of the day was spent visiting  a variety of stores in Reykjavik that various members of the family wanted to visit earlier but could not because of the hours of work for the stores (Monday, August 5 was something called "Commerce Day" in Iceland. Apparently, very little commerce is actually taking place on commerce day).

We visited Nexus, a large board game store occupying the basement of a small shopping center,  Markadur, a thrift store close to the center of Reykjavik, and Kringlan, a large shopping mall with a computer game store, and a bunch of other stores in it.   After that, we drove downtown, and went along Laugavegur, in search of last-moment souvenirs.  

Around 7:30pm, we went back home, had dinner and packed.

Our last Icelandic sunset, as seen from the place we are staying in.

This is pretty much it for us in Iceland. Tomorrow, the flight is at 11:55am, at 9:00am we need to return the car back to where we took it, which means leaving the house around 8am.

Driving. Around 100-110 kilometers.  I will need to get a bit more gas tomorrow before we leave.

Walking.  10,536 steps according to Google Fit.  A lot of them were probably at Kringlan, but I'll take all of them.  Of the 10 days in Iceland, only one involved fewer than 10,000 steps, and on three days we did over 15,000.  Also, a lot of those steps on different days were vertical....

Day 11 plans. Get home by 11pm Pacific time.  I, then, have to drive to San Jose 4 hours later.