Landscapes of Norway and Iceland: June 2018

This year, I was accepted into a conference in Oslo, Norway. It turned out that the least expensive way to get to Norway was to go through Iceland, which I have been wanting to visit for years now.  And, IcelandAir is promoting tourism by advertising "free" layovers.  (In actuality, this means that the cost of your flight doesn't increase if you choose to stay in Iceland for a few days; in my case, since we planned a one-week layover, the cost of the flight actually went down.  But, this in no way makes up for the cost of being in Iceland, which is not an inexpensive place to be.)  So, this was the perfect opportunity to see two countries I've never been to-- both with stunningly beautiful and unique landscapes.

My mom and I left for Oslo on June 4, arriving mid-afternoon on June 5 in Oslo. By the time we got to our hotel, it was about 2:30 pm.

Tuesday, June 5: Oslo

Because I wanted to be near the conference I was presenting at, we stayed at the Radisson Blu

View of Oslo from our hotel room.

just off the main walking street in Oslo, near the Palace. So, after checking in, the first thing we did was head off to see the Royal Palace and get the lay of the land (so, pretty much all pictures of the day are exteriors).

The Royal Palace was built between 1825 and 1849; Charles III, under whose reign the construction began, died 5 years before it was finished.  The royal Norwegian family lives in it today, largely because they love the park, Slottsparken, which surrounds the palace.

The park and the palace are pretty accessible and open, especially considering that the royal family actually lives there. However, while there are tours of the palace available, it was closed on the day we were there do to a state visit-- though the only tell-tale sign of it was an actual piece of paper taped to the gate announcing that the actual palace was closed to visitors for the day. There were no barricades or extra security evident. We did, however, get to the palace right as the changing of the guard seemed to be happening.

From the Royal Palace, we walked down the main street, Karl Johans Gate. It's a long walking street that basically runs from the Royal Palace to the train station (and, if you curve off a little, the Opera House). There are a lot of shops and restaurants along Karl Johans Gate, though most of them are touristy.  Many of the stores, however, have trolls "guarding" their doors.

The most touristy store also had them inside-- and the moved and talked.

I have no idea what this tree troll is saying. 

These trolls are all over Norway-- trolls are important in Norwegian folklore. They cause mischief a lot of the time, but they also supposedly did things like create the fjords.  At any rate, they were everywhere we went... there are daily troll sightings all over Norway (you can find a montage of daily trolls after this at the end of every day).

The restaurants on Karl Johans Gate are largely American chains including Hard Rock, TGIF, and Ben and Jerry's (as wells as the usual fast food suspects like McDonald's).   Hard Rock and TGIF were really popular (we refused to go).

Also along the way are bigger sites like is the National Theater,which was inaugurated in 1899,

There is a a second building that is part of the Theater, but it was largely under construction and so wasn't really photographable. 

The fountain outside the National Theater which I largely managed to get a picture of with no one in it, which wasn't easy.  People congregate around it, especially when the weather is nice, which is was every day we were in Oslo. 

the University of Oslo (not the university which was the site of my conference), which opened in 1813,

and the Parliament building

which was built in 1866. There are tours available of Parliament, though only on Saturdays, except in July and August when they run more frequently.  Needless to say, we didn't see the inside of Parliament.

The area near the end (or, beginning) of Karl Johans Gate, near the train station, is a shopping square where there's a flower market

which sits in front of the Cathedral.

Around the Cathedral are the bazaar halls

which were built around 1858 and currently house summer handicraft outlets and restaurants.  There wasn't much of the handicraft stores, but the restaurants were in full swing-- we returned the next day for those.

Around the train station area is also a small set of rides including a carousel and a ferris wheel,

which in our jet-lagged state, seemed like a really good idea. It does provide a nice view of the city, especially the waterfront.

That's the Opera House in the left of the picture. 

The Opera house is to the right of the train station area.  It's hailed as one of the great tourist sites in Oslo, though it's probably the one that was least interesting to me, for the same reason: it's incredibly modern (and sort of out of keeping with the rest of the architecture in the city center).

It is, however, a popular sunbathing and swimming spot and there were people out there the entire time we were in Oslo; it was in the 80s and sunny the whole time we were there, and had been for a couples weeks before we arrived, which is basically an extreme heat wave for Norway (which you can tell because nothing is air conditioned, including hotel rooms). The Norwegians were all taking full advantage of the nice weather.

Along the waterfront are boats

and also sauna boats.

I never really understood how these worked, though there was also one with a bunch of girls hanging out on it.

There is also a beer garden next to a more land-based sauna

as well as an art-exhibit called The Arctic Pyramid.

It is an audio installation created by a Swedish artist, BJ Nilsen meant to capture "the uncanny contrasts within soundscapes on the borderland between Norway and Russia, where the sparse beauty of the Arctic landscape meets industrial decay and heavy pollution."

It's a little hard to hear because of the ambient noise of the harbor, but that is probably part of the point as well.

We were really meandering through all of this (and stopping in some of the touristy stores to look around), so it took hours to make it this far and quite jet-lagged as we'd been up for more than 36 hours straight, so we started to walk back towards the hotel. Along the way, however, we stopped at what seemed to be a very popular drink spot on Karl Johan Gate;

it only serves drinks and was busy every time we passed (and not just with tourists-- which begs the question of when exactly the Norwegians work.  Apparently they're quite flexible about work hours, especially when they weather is as nice as it was while we were there.).  We stopped for a drink: a beer for me and tea (with a side of ice to make it cold) for my mom.

Alcohol is really expensive in Norway-- a cheap beer is about $10, mostly due to the heavy taxing of it.  Evidently, Norwegians heavily tax anything that isn't good for you in order to encourage healthy living (not that the healthy things aren't also a bit pricey...)

It's hard to tell from the pictures because it doesn't really get dark in Norway in the summer, but by now it was quite late and we hadn't really eaten anything since we'd arrived in Oslo, so we headed back in the direction of our hotel and stopped at an Italian restaurant right outside of it: La Cucina.  (There are a lot of Italian restaurants in Norway and not so many "traditional" Norwegian ones... mostly, "traditional" means seafood.  There are a lot of seafood places-- they just aren't really advertised as Norwegian food.)

We chose to sit outside because it was still nice out. We both went kind of simple with dinner, mostly out of exhaustion.

My mom ordered a tomato soup and a special bread.

My pasta arrabiata. 

And then, we returned to our room for the evening-- and experienced the first night of the whole two weeks in which we would be somewhat disoriented by the evening light. We spent a lot of our time not really knowing what time it was without looking at a watch, and this is why.

This is the view of Oslo from our hotel room at 10:30 PM.  Fortunately, almost everywhere we went had blackout curtains. 

Wednesday, June 6: Oslo

We had more of a sightseeing plan for our second day in Oslo, though it was created a bit on the fly-- we were supposed to have a food tour but it was postponed to Friday.  So, we started by getting the breakfast that was included with the hotel, which was a really extensive buffet

You could fresh squeeze your own juice.

There is more to the buffet off to the left-- and the yogurt and place to squeeze juice is to the right of this.

but if you wanted something like French toast or an omelette, you could order that also, for no extra charge.

Our breakfast choices on day one.

There are several sites near the waterfront; right along the waterfront is City Hall.

Front of City Hall

Garden at City Hall

Back of City Hall from Waterfront side.

City Hall was inaugurated in 1950. There's a bit of controversy about this building because of how big it is; those who live there don't seem to like it much. It sits really close to the water

where there are lots of boats and ferries and several restaurants.  It's also the site of the Nobel Fredssenter, or the Nobel Peace Center.

In front of the Nobel Peace Center sits this wagon

which seems to be connected to the 2017 prize winners, ICAN (but does also feel like a bit of a dig at Trump, especially since it's currently the theme of those protesting him as he visits NATO in Belgium).

Entry of the Peace Center

There are several exhibits at the museum; the first floor houses "Generation Wealth." and exhibit of work by Laura Greenfield about the all-consuming obsession with status, beauty and wealth.  It's not really an exhibition which can be photographed, but there is a film and a book associated with it, also called Generation Wealth.

The "coin" associated with winning the Nobel Prize is also on display, though the mirrors around it make it a bit hard to photograph.

Upstairs is an exhibit dedicated to the most recent winners of the prize, ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and their cause. (The very first sentence of the audio guide to the exhibit also takes aim at Trump and his continuous threat to unleash the nuclear threat, which makes me think his desire for his own Nobel won't be met.)

There is also a permanent exhibit dedicated to all the past winners which includes their pictures on "moving" screens.

When you enter the museum, your "ticket" is a sticker with the name of a Noble recipient on it-- the display isn't in chronological order, so you are then "charged" with finding yours.  This was mine: Jane Addams, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her pioneering social work in the US. 

When you get close to the picture, the screen changes to display information about the recipient.

The exit stairs are framed in colored glass.

After exploring the Nobel Peace Center, we walked around the waterfront towards the fortress, passing a statue of Franklin Roosevelt on the way. It's there to honor his support of Norway during WWII.

Along the waterfront, though high above it is Akershus Festning and Slott, a medieval castle and fortress. Because of the way we were walking, we entered near Munk's Tower (1559).  It's named for Governor Christian Munk who is responsible for demolishing the original water tower that stood on this spot.

This is the South Wing (c. 1300)

which has been added onto and restored a few times, though the last time was the 1900s.
From this side of the fortress, you can also get some lovely panoramic views.

There are also cannons

and more important cannons, like these.

These are the cannons on Michael Von Sundts Square.  They were noisily loaded and pointed at prisoners in the courtyard in 1844; the prisoners were protesting their new breakfast of beer and bread (which I'm guessing retrospectively doesn't really seem worth protesting but rather like something worth advocating for), but the rebellion was quelled by Christian Glad who talked the prisoners into standing down. 

As we walked towards the Visitor's Center, we came across the performance space (at the same site as the carp pond) where a rehearsal was taking place.

I never actually figured out what the performance was.

Inside the Visitor's Center is an exhibit about the prison functions the fortress has served, including the story of a famous prisoner who kept escaping.  It also recreated the cells

as well as the sleeping bunks,

which looked a lot like coffins, and what the wearing of irons looked like.

Back outside, you continue around the fortress to the North Curtain Wall and Knut tower (both c. 1300)

The wall itself is guarded by a member of the Royal Guard

though if you wait for him to stop marching, he will talk to you and even pose for pictures. It's not nearly as serious as Buckingham Palace. (The guards at the Royal Palace in Oslo will also stand there while you take pictures next to them.)

You can walk back to where we started past the Romerike Bastion down the Battery Road, which was extra fortification built in the 1970s.

It also provides nice framing for photos.

After visiting the fortress, we walked up through the Old Town and found a place for lunch, Kafe and Crepe,

a cute French bistro.

My mom had a crepe and salad and I had a goat cheese salad and what was advertised as tea, but was really more like lime-ade.

Next door to Krepe and Cafe was a place called Pastel de Nata, named for the custard Portuguese pastry which neither of us has had since we were in Portugal in 2014.

So, we got those for dessert. The outside of the bakery was even decorated with traditional Portuguese tiles.

From lunch, we headed to the National Gallery, or Nasjonalgalleriet, which basically has exhibits from antiquity up until the 1950s.  Perhaps most noteably, it houses Edvard Munch's The Scream, which is surprising only because there is actually a Munch museum in Oslo and you would think that's where his most famous painting would be.

It's much smaller and less vibrant in person than posters and reproductions would lead you to believe. The National Gallery also houses other famous artists, like Van Gogh.

Gitar, 1912

This was my favorite painting, though it didn't photograph nearly the way it looked in person.

Harald Sohlberg, Vinternatt I Rodane (Winter Night in the Mountains), 1914

In person, it almost glows.

There is also a room in the gallery called The Fairy Tale Room.  You look down through glass at illuminated images, many depicting trolls

After the National Gallery, we actually walked back to hotel because the opening reception for my conference was being held in the Summit Bar there. On the way, we did pass Oslo's Fearless Girl which was dedicated on March 8, 2018.

The original is in New York, but it now appears in many cities around the world.

The conference reception was held in the Summit Bar of the Raddisson Blu which does provide a lovely view of the city (and a different one from my hotel room).

You can see pretty far from the Summit Bar which is on the 21st floor of the hotel.  A little to the right of center is City Hall-- the brown towers.

The Summit Bar has cocktails, but no food, so after I was done at the reception, we headed out back out towards the Cathedral area for dinner.  We had dinner at Baltazar, one of the restaurants in the bazaar halls.

Fountain right next to our table. Behind it is the Cathedral.

We shared a wood-fired pizza (which is what everyone else eating there seemed to be enjoying)

and a fabulous tiramisu.

Again, you wouldn't know it because of the lighting, but we didn't even arrive at dinner until after 9 pm. This was the sky, over the University of Oslo and over the Royal Palace, on the way back to the hotel, around 10:30 at night.

Trolls of the day:

 Thursday, June 7: Oslo

Thursday was the day I did my presentation at the conference: the Forum for English for Academic Purposes held at the Oslo Metropolitan University which it turns out, I could actually see from my hotel room.

The University is the building with the writing on it.

I was at the conference until mid-afternoon.  Fortunately, because it stays light so late, most attractions in Oslo are also open quite late (the fortress, for example, is open until 11 pm). So, we still had time to do some sightseeing after I was done. I had been wanted to see the inside of the Cathedral (which is supposed to be open pretty much all of the time, but hadn't seemed to be the first day we were there), so we headed there-- and it was open (through this door which had previously been shut). The Cathedral dates from 1697.

The ceiling was painted between 1936 and 1950.

The stained glass was created by Emmanuel Vigeland.

The altarpiece is a 1748 model of the Last Supper and the Crucifixion created by Michael Rasch.  The original was moved all over the country and now resides in the Prestnes church in Majorstue.

From the Cathedral, we walked back down to the waterfront to catch a ferry over to Bygdøy,

where there are quite a few museums.  If you started early in the day, it would probably be possible to visit all of them, but we were there pretty late, so we only had time for one. We decided to go to the Norsk Folkemuseum which is surprisingly not one of the highly recommended ones in the guide book, but should be. From what I can tell, it's not something people talk about, but it's an incredible place.

To get there, you have to walk through a Bygdøy neighborhood, which I'm assuming is the wealthiest area of Oslo as most of houses are really villas.

This was my favorite-- how many houses have actual turrets? 

The museum itself

has an indoor exhibition of artifacts like furniture, clothing and jewelry.

This is actually a bridal crown and belt (not royal). 

There were several pieces which featured variations of Rosemåling

which is a decorative folk art that originated in the rural valleys of Norway. It's always a stylized floral pattern, but the actual look of it can vary greatly.

There is also a large exhibit of mittens, or Selbuvotten.

They evolved over time, going from black and white to dyed and colored patterns, but all of the are Norwegian in origin.  And, many of the women who made them had patterns which were unique to them. There are about 300 registered patterns.

The real draw of the museum, however, is the Open-Air section, which is huge and really should take hours to explore. It consists of lots of buildings representing church, country and town life through history.  We started in The Old Town,

which has apartment buildings, shops and artisan buildings representing life in Norway from the 1800s to early 2000s.  Some of the buildings/interiors are replicas and some are actual buildings which were relocated to the museum. These are the living room, kitchen and bed chamber from the interior of Stupinngata 10, a house inhabited by Martha Olsen, a 65-year old tobacco factory worker, in 1954.

There are interiors ranging in a variety of styles from multiple time periods.

The Old Town also had exteriors and interiors from stores

and banks

bars

and gas stations.

It also has working artisan shops, but we arrived quite late in the day and those close at 5, so we didn't get to see those in action. On the other side of the property are the countryside and farm buildings as well as the Stave Church.

There are buildings from multiple farms which were brought to the museum property ranging from 1258 to 1959.

There are a few you can go into, like the this schoolhouse.

By far, the star of the "show" is the Stave Church

Front of Stave Church

Back of Stave Church.

which is up a bit of a hill, but worth the trek. The Stave Church at the Folkemuseum is from Gol (c. 1200), so is one of the oldest Stave churches remaining.  Stave refers to the building method-- they are made of wood and all have corner-posts (the staves) and a timber framework and wall planks standing on sills.

And, they often also have intricate carvings with both Christian and pre-Christian Viking-themed motifs in them.

It's thought that there used to be more than 1,000 in Norway, but today there are only 28 remaining.
The last ferry back to Oslo City Hall is at 6:35 pm; it is possible to take a bus back, but when I said something about staying later at the museum and taking the bus, the woman who worked there seemed a bit horrified at the idea, so we left in time to catch the ferry back.

Down by the waterfront area series of old warehouse buildings which have been converted into shops and restaurants.  One of them is Solsiden,

a seafood restaurant with a water view.

I never found out why-- I'm assuming because there was some kind of event happening-- but when we arrived we were told that the outside was full but we could have a table inside (being able to walk up and get a table anywhere is an anomaly in the summer-- it's best to have a reservation) if we could eat in one hour.  We decided we could.  Solsiden is most famous for its seafood tour, which is huge; the people at the table next to us had one though I don't the photo does justice to the enormity of it.  (They didn't come close to finishing it.)

We chose something else.

My mom had the lobster salad.

I had mussels.

It was really good, and one of the more expensive meals we had.  But a nice end to the day.

Oslo: sky at midnight, hotel room view.

Troll of the day:

Friday, June 8: Olso

Our food tour had been moved to Friday, so after a light breakfast, we headed by tram to Olaf Ryes Plass, a park where we met our tour guide by the fountain.

The tour started at the Mathallen Food Hall.

The food hall has about 30 specialty food and import vendors; you can buy food but it's also a place to hang out.

We sat at the tables next to this bar for our tasting.

We were there at around 11:30 am, so it wasn't very crowded, but it's apparently a popular after work spot.

Our first tasting was of cheese and then meats from Gutta på Haugen

The cheese in the upper right corner is traditional Norwegian Brown Cheese, a cheese made from whey and cooked long enough that it caramelizes.  It tastes more like caramel than cheese-- I think you either love it or hate it. I thought it was great-- it was on every breakfast buffet in Norway, so I had it before this food tour; in fact, I had it with every breakfast while we were in Norway.

A variety of meat, going from least spicy to most from right to left (so, left is spiciest-- I didn't think it was terribly spicy, but it seemed to be to others on the food tour.)

and a beer from Hopyard.  This one is Elk and Tid Brom, a raspberry flavored beer that was more like a spritzer.

My mom, who usually makes unhappy faces when we taste alcoholic beverages, even liked this one.

From the food hall, we walked around the area a bit.  The area immediately around the food hall is a bit more artsy and hipster; hence the street art.

It also runs along the river.

From there, we headed back towards central Oslo, going through Youngstorget (which used to be called Nytorvet, or "New Square" from 1852 until 1951). The current name is for Jørgen Young, a politician and financier in the 1800s.

It's the main political square in Oslo as it's the site of the headquarters for many political groups including the Norwegian Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Workers' Youth League, and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions. (Norway has very strong Labour and Trade Union groups; hence their relatively relaxed and happy work culture.)

Our next stop was at a chocolate shop called Summerbird.

Behind the counter is our tour guide.

Summerbird is actually a Danish company. There is very little chocolate that is truly Norwegian; it mostly either comes from Denmark or is made from Danish recipes. So, it's not technically Norwegian food (as the rest of the food and drink was), but it is good chocolate.  Summerbird is located on the bottom level of Steen and Strøm, a department store. Here we had several kinds of chocolate.

In the bottom right corner is dark chocolate; the top right is truffles-- one raspberry and one chocolate-- and a piece of white chocolate; and the top left is a chocolate and marshmallow bon-bon.

It was a bit strange in terms of timing-- having chocolate as a second stop-- but made sense in terms of where we were walking.

We continued our walk through the Old Town of Oslo

ending at the waterfront, past the Nobel Peace Center, at a restaurant called Rorbua.

Here, we had a tasting plate of traditional Norwegian food.

The plate includes reindeer sausage (upper right, served with a horseradish cream cheese, I think my favorite item on the plate), reindeer jerky (lower right), salmon and salmon cake (middle-- the salmon cake was really salty, probably my least favorite thing on the plate), whale ceviche (next to the salmon cake), whale "pate" (leaning on the ceviche) and cured cod (far left), as well as loganberry sauce (left bottom corner).  

Our final stop was for a beer tasting at Amundsen Bryggeri og Spiseri, an Olso based brewery.

Here, we tried three beers

which got the more typical reaction from my mom.

This was the last stop for our group.

In the back, on the right, is another conference presenter/attendee.  He just happened to be on the food tour as well. Our guide is on the front left.

Our tour guide had mentioned other things to do for the day-- one was to head back towards where we started the tour and go for a walk through the forest to the waterfall which sounded lovely.  It also meant that we could head back towards the food market where there was a gelato place, Paradis.

My very chocolaty gelato.

The food on the food tour was really good and a nice representation of Norwegian cuisine; it was also reasonably portioned, so not as overwhelming as other food tours I've been on (many of which have so much food that you run out of the will to try anything on the last couple stops). The other upside to it not being an overwhelming amount of food was that, by the time we made our way back to the food market, it wasn't unreasonable to get an afternoon gelato.

From here, we walked back towards where we had been earlier when we were shown the path to get to the forest, but it was blocked by construction.  We walked down by an old water storage which has been converted to apartments, one of the first places we passed when we began the food tour

and, as we had been told the way to the forest followed the river, followed the water there to what became the entrance to a park-- which, it turned out, was the "forest" our guide had been referring to. I'm not sure if it was translation or overstatement-- but the walk was definitely through park, which was lovely but not quite as grand as we were expecting.

Along the edge of the park is this building:

which apparently is "it," though I don't know what it is.

There is a waterfall of sorts in the park, though again, not quite as grand as it was represented to be.

But, it was a lovely walk.

Most notably, as we were walking towards the park exit, a man in a motorized wheelchair went by us-- and the somewhat large man in it was completely naked.  (I have no picture of this because I was stunned and then too slow to grab my camera.)  He seem to unaccompanied and inexplicably navigating through the park with no clothes on; I also seem to be the only one who noticed this.  My mom, who was right next to me, never saw him, though I cannot figure out how she missed it.  But no one seemed to be concerned except me. It was the strangest thing I saw on our trip-- and I'm really sorry I have no corroboration.

This had been a really long day, so we headed back to the hotel to rest and then decided to have dinner (which we had pretty late) in the hotel restaurant 26 North.

26 North does a lot of small plates, which was good for dinner the day of a food tour.

Grilled watermelon and asparagus salad

Potato waffles with Norwegian cured ham

This was our last day in Oslo.

Trolls of the day:

Saturday, June 9: Oslo to Flam and the Fjord Safari

Norway has a fairly large tourism company that runs Norway in a Nutshell-- which is basically the train from Oslo to Bergen (or the reverse) and stops along the way.  So, we had decided to do the trip in 2 days, stopping off overnight in Flam.  The train ride from Oslo to Bergen itself, but especially this first leg from Oslo to Myrdal, is one of the most beautifully scenic train rides and is famous for being so.  Part of what makes it so gorgeous is the change of elevations that mean you see a variety of landscapes.

We left Oslo close to 9 am (our train left late). The train ride to Myrdal takes about 4 1/2 hours and goes up in elevation for a lot of the time. You can tell from the pictures because it gets more and more snowy (it was quite warm in Oslo when we left).

Because our train was late leaving, and thus late arriving in Myrdal, we had just enough time to get from our train to the next one, the train to Flam or Flamsbana.

Interior of the Flamsbana.

The train to Flam from Myrdal is the steepest railway descent in Europe. It starts at 866 meters above sea level and descends to 2 meters above sea level. It was completed in 1944. The Flam Railway makes a few stops along the way, but the most notable one is at Kjosfossen Waterfall, where it stops for about 5 minutes so everyone can get out.  They announce that the platform is quite slippery and to be careful-- and I was wearing completely the wrong shoes (sandals), so even with the warning, I totally wiped out. The platform is slippery because it's quite close to the waterfall.

There is a myth about the Huldra, a forest spirit in Norwegian lore who lures men into the forest to seduce them.  She comes out to do her siren dance for visitors to the platform.

From Kjosfossen, the train continues its scenic descent, past more waterfalls

and finally arrives in Flam, a small town-- very small. You can walk the whole thing in about 5 minutes. But it's one of the biggest in the Western Fjord region.

We checked into our hotel, the Fretheim Hotel,

View of Flam from our hotel balcony.

and then went to get something to eat before our late afternoon safari cruise.

There is a small area of tourist shops and food trucks in Flam.

We were told during food tour that the hot dog is really the "national" food of Norway, so that's what we got for lunch from a food truck that sold both hotdogs and more traditionally Indian food.

On the right is a reindeer stew that we were offered samples of after we ordered hot dogs. I wish I'd tried it first, because I probably would have had that instead of the hot dog had I known how good it was. 

After lunch, it was time for our late afternoon (it started about 4:30 and lasted a little more than 3 hours) fjord safari, a cruise on a small boat

 around the fjords, for which we were dressed in (not flattering) waterproof flotation suits.

The cruise itself went into two fjords (though, to be honest, I couldn't really tell you the difference between them. The locals clearly know, but you have to be really familiar with the landscape to navigate it.): Aurlandsfjord and Nærøyfjord. Along the way are also several waterfalls and small villages, including one where only person lives full time. Most of them have a few more people, but not many.

Because the boat was so small, we could get up really close to the waterfalls.

This was about the usual size of a village located along the fjords.

Many of the villages didn't have roads going to them until the 1980s or 90s.  Now many of them have one road leading to them, though not all.  The farm/bed and breakfast of Stigen is an example of a place only accessible by boat or kayak-- and then a steep hike.

It's 300 meters above sea level and only operates in the summer, both as a farm and as a bed and breakfast.  It's only accessible by climbing the stairs (though there is a winch system in place to haul luggage up if you need it).

The winch system and dock are in the lower left corner.  If you look closely (I had to really zoom in), you can see hikers on the path climbing up to the farm/hotel.

The visitors to the farm are accompanied on their climb by the goats that live there, mostly because those making the climb are advised to have water and snacks with them for the hike and the goats know about the food. You can see hikers in the lower left; the goats are more to the middle of the picture.

The fjords themselves are gorgeous; legend has it that they were carved out by the trolls (hence, one important role they play and part of the reason they are everywhere).

In Nærøyfjord is the town of Gudvangen (which we actually visited the next day). It's a town of about 120 people.  But, it also has seals that swim there and we saw one from our small boat.

You can see the seal's head bobbing above the water in the middle of the picture.

Part of safari trip included a cheese tasting stop in Undredal, located in Aurlandsfjord; we passed it on our way around the fjords and then stopped on the way back to Flam.

Undredal from on shore.

Approaching Undredal from the boat.

Undredal has fewer than 100 inhabitants; it got a road that connects it to Flam in 1989. However, it is a major producer of goat cheese. It is also home to one of the remaining 29 Stave churches. Our cheese tasting included a lot of variety of cheeses (including brown cheese) as well as sauces and flatbread crackers.

and juice

which we enjoyed outside, with a lovely view of the fjord.

And then, we headed back to Flam.

We had dinner that night in the Fretheim Hotel restaurant.

The amuse bouche-- a sort of savory ice cream served with fish.

My dinner: lamb with leeks and other vegetables

Mom's dinner: goat cream cheese with salad and toast

 I also learned what the juice from earlier was (it wasn't cranberry, but rather, raspberry).

And that was the end of our day in on trains and in Flam.

Flam sky at midnight.

Trolls of the day (all Flam trolls):

Sunday, June 10: Gudvangen, Voss train to Bergen, and Bergen

Sunday morning, we got up early to have breakfast in the hotel

and then to catch our cruise to Gudvangen, which is the next leg of the Norway in a Nutshell tour.

The cruise itself takes about 2 1/2 hours and covers some of the same landscape the safari cruise did, though the cruise to Gudvangen also ventures into Sognefjord, one of the world's longest and deepest fjords.  The cruise takes this path.

As with the day before, the scenery was lovely.

I enjoyed a bit more of it than my mom did.

One of the more entertaining "sights" of this cruise, however, was this couple.  This woman spent about 2 hours of the cruise staging her personal photo shoot.

This went on all over the boat, from every angle, every deck, etc. This isn't even the best of the photo shoot antics, just the part I recorded.

We were at Sagfossen Waterfall while this particular part of the photo shoot was going on. Sagfossen is about 500 meters long, and is one of the highest waterfalls in Nærøyfjord. This is what the rest of us on the boat were looking at.

The boat lets everyone out at Gudvangen where we had about 30 minutes before we caught the bus to Voss.

Gudvangen is something of a Viking town. Many of it's inhabitants have rebuilt a Viking village and live in it the way the Vikings did. You can take a tour and experience the Viking lifestyle, though we didn't have time. The Viking statues and boat are outside the entrance to the actual village, where the tourist shop and restaurant are... for those just stopping for 30 minutes (which happens a few times a day).

The bus from Gudvangen to Voss is its own scenic adventure as well, passing through the Nærøydalen Valley

and past waterfalls

which are close to the road along rather harrowing, windy descent called Stalheimskleiva.

It's about 1.5 kilometers long and includes 13 "sharp hairpin bends". It's one of the steepest stretches of road in Northern Europe.

The bus ride ends in Voss at the train station, which is relatively unremarkable

but, is the last stop before Bergen.

We got into Bergen mid-afternoon and then made the steep climb to our hotel,

I don't think the photo up the hill towards our hotel quite does justice to how steep it actually is, especially when rolling luggage up it.

Steens, a hotel converted from a house built in the 1890s.

It's located in a lovely area with other houses from the 1890s

and still maintains a lot of the charm of the original home.

Stairway (which fortunately, others took our suitcases up and down)

Breakfast room

Other side of the breakfast room with tea and coffee and cookies available all day.

Our room was really large, and included not only a bedroom but sitting room as well.

It also had a balcony with a great view of the adjoining park.

The hotel breakfast room was open all day for tea, coffee, and, it turned out, hot chocolate, so we had a quick snack of cookies and drinks

Real hot chocolate

and then headed down the hill to explore Bergen.

When you get to the city center, the first thing you encounter is the outdoor fish market,

a long row of vendors selling fresh fish and other products as well as serving food to eat in the tents.  There are also fruit vendors.

The couple cookies wasn't really enough of a snack after not having eaten since breakfast, so we got a cup of fruit which was so good I could have eaten several more.

The older part of Bergen, Bryggen, is on the far side of the fish market from where we walked down.

These are the iconic buildings which are in most pictures of Bergen.  Many of them are now shops or restaurants, though a few have been preserved as part of the Hanseatic Museum and Schøtstuene (which we visited the next day). Behind the houses on the main street is a small artisan "village".

Decorative manhole cover; there are several of these in the historical section of Bryggen.

 There is also this wooden carving

which is apparently some kind of cod.

While we were wandering around Byrggen, we got pulled away by this parade:

which wound past this church

and ended in a small square.  It was apparently part of some religious confirmation ceremony, though we never got the full story.



From there, having been pulled a little off track, we walked back down along the waterfront

looking for someplace to eat dinner, but also stopping to look at the series of wooden sculptures which were part of the 2018 Bergen International Wood Festival. It's a regular competition that asks participants to build wooden sculptures related to the theme; this year's theme was "the climate change."

This one took 2nd place.  It's called "The Guilty Reminents" and was built by students from Norway.

This is an honorable mention called "Ark" created by students from England.

This was the first place winner. It's called "The Canopy" and was created by students from China.  Honestly, I don't know why it won first place. It seemed to be the simplest and maybe least inventive construction there.  But, I also don't know the rules or the judging criteria.  I'm just going on this compared the other sculptures.

Like this one, called "The Shift", created by students from Canada and Syria, which didn't win anything but seems much more complicated.

Eventually, we decided to eat at Olivia

partially because we were really hungry and it seemed easy, but also because it was crowded which seemed to bode well. It's a chain, but each restaurant features a menu from a different region of Italy.  The one in Bergen features Sicily.

Appetizer: bruschetta with basil, tomato and burrata.

My mom had lasagna.

I had risotto with asparagus. 

This had been a long day of travel, so we headed back uphill to our hotel (which was a much easier walk without luggage).

Bergen night sky about 10 pm

Trolls of Voss 

This troll is actually quite large, at least 6 feet tall, but it's hard to tell from the picture.

 and Bergen



Monday, June 11: Bergen

After breakfast at the hotel

we headed back down to the waterfront for our Bergen Fjord Cruise

which goes through Osterfjord and the Mostraumen Straight and past tiny villages.

Bergen from the boat.

This was once a factory.

The boat navigated through this narrow passage.

Mostraumen Straight

One of the highlights of the trip is drinking water from a waterfall.

One of the people working on the boat catches water from this waterfall in a bucket

and everyone gets a cup.

It's the last waterfall before the turnaround point to head back to Bergen.

After our cruise around the Bergen fjords, it seemed like a good time for lunch, so we went to the outdoor fish market for fish and chips.

It was a pretty large portion, so we split it.  And, there were also onion rings.

From lunch, we headed to a couple museums, though we stopped along the way at Baker Brun for a pastry (since we had split one plate at lunch).

The one on the top left with coconut, is a skolebolle. The one on the right, with cinnamon and sugar, is a skillingsbolle. 

From Baker Brun, we went to the Bryggens Museum. It's permanent exhibition is of objects found in an archaeological excavation after a 1955 fire.

This dates from c. 1300

These are the remains from the oldest tenements building in the first century.

There is also a temporary art exhibit, "From Dahl to Dolk" on the upper floor of the museum.  By far the most interesting part of it were the comic satires by Frithjof Sælen featuring Snorri the Seal.

Published during World War II, Snorri the Seal is the chronicles of Snorri, ".the vainest little seal in the Arctic Ocean," and the metaphorical threats he ignores, animals like sharks and polar bears which stand in for Nazi threats. This, by far, was the work which was most represented work in the exhibition.

From the museum, we tried to go to the fortress and the Rosenkrantz Tower, home of King Eirik Magnusson, the last king to reside in Bergen who lived in the tower until his death in 1299.  However, we saw very little of it.

Entrance to the fortress.

They were preparing for a music festival that started the next day (which was going to feature Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as a headliner) and most of the fortress was closed down due to this.

From our failed visit to the fortress, we headed towards the Hanseatic Musuem (which turned out to be more of what I thought the Bryggens museum was going to be.  I would recommend skipping the Bryggens Museum and going to the Hanseatic Musuem, especially if you have limited time and have to choose.).

The Hanseatic League was a German trading company that operated in the North and Baltic Seas between 1360 and 1761. They ran an office in Bryggen.  The museum is separated into two locations; we started at the Schøtstuene Assembly Rooms

 which were 4 halls and 2 kitchens.

If you look under the pots, you can see the shoes they used to wear in the kitchen.

The assembly rooms were the only place where open fires were permitted, so this is wear the member of the league gathered to be warm in winter. The rooms were used for meals as well as lessons, court sessions and celebrations.

In one of the two kitchens, the Dramshusen Cookhouse, through the floor you can see the medieval ruin from 1280 that it was built on top of.

Down the street, at the corner, sits the part of the museum dedicated to the Finnegård tenement.  It was reconstructed in 1704 after a city fire in 1702.

The tenements were trading houses as well as places to live; this one contains storage and processing rooms for stockfish and cod liver oil as well as offices and dormitories.

Inside what looks like cabinets are actually beds. This was probably one that belonged to a manager since it's a single and not part of a dormitory. 

The bed inside.

Office

Dormitory-- you can see how there are multiple bunks in what look like cabinets.

Steep and narrow stairs.

Because of the fire hazard, there was no lighting, heat or kitchen in any of the houses.  The museum has preserved the authenticity, so it can be a little dark in some of the rooms.

From the museum, we headed up the street to the funicular that goes up to Mt. Fløyen.

The funicular entrance is the building in the center left, with the red arch.

Mt. Fløyen is 320 meters up and offers a stunning view of all of Bergen.

There are also mountain goats hanging out at the top.

They are clearly used to people.

A goat hanging with my mom. (The picture of me petting a goat is on her camera.)

What I don't have is a video of is the goat who chased down another visitor who had a sandwich with her.  The goats were quite aggressive about getting to the food and chased her until she basically just threw the sandwich, in its wrapper, to the ground where the goats gobbled it up, along with the packaging.

There is a relatively short hike (about 1.6 km for the whole loop)

which takes you through an apparently bewitched forest

to Skomakerdiket Lake

where there are fairly friendly ducks.

From there, we took the funicular down

We got the front seat on the way down, so it was easier to take pictures in the funicular. The funicular makes a couple stops on the way up and down at residential streets along the way, so it's not only a tourist site, but local transportation as well.

When we were done at Mt. Fløyen, it had gotten pretty late (the funicular stays open until 11 pm, so you can visit until quite late, especially since in the summer, it doesn't get dark), so we went to a small cafe we had passed a couple times and which had always been crowded when we walked by, Ruccola, and snagged the only available table.

The bread served with dinner, with a really good flavored butter.

My spaghetti bolognese

My mom's risotto al porcini

Dessert: apple cake with vanilla ice cream

And then, we walked through a few side streets

and past a McDonald's set in a building from 1710 (though you can only tell from the outside),

The writing at the top, above the circular window, provides the date of the building.

past St. John's Church (which we couldn't go into that evening because there was a concert),

and then back to the hotel.

Bergen night sky from our hotel balcony, about 11 pm

Daily Troll (from Mt. Fløyen):

Tuesday, June 12: Bergen (and brief return to Oslo)

We had a little more than half a day to spend in Bergen before heading to the airport to return to Oslo, so we decided to head to the aquarium.  The aquarium, or Akvariet, is all the way at the end of the wharf, past where all the cruise ships dock. On the way, we passed the shortest street in Bergen.

This says that its the shortest street at 14.82 meters. which is about 46 feet.

This is the whole street.

The first thing you encounter on the way into the aquarium are the penguins,

though we came back later to spend more time with them during their feeding.

It's not a particularly big aquarium, but it packs a lot in.

One of the first displays is of giant koi.

This was, by far, the scariest looking fish.

They're even more ferocious looking as a group.

There is a caiman exhibit for some reason; it seemed a little strange for an aquarium.

Crocodile

Shark tunnel

The long-spine porcupinefish is now my favorite fish of all time.

Look how pretty its eyes are!

And the lips!

The long-spine porcupinefish is named that way because it can blow itself up into a spiny ball.  It has 4 teeth, but I never saw them.  The information card on it also said its a "relatively poor swimmer" though it seemed to be doing just fine in the tank.

There is also a tank of sea animals which you can touch; I picked up a starfish and a sea urchin.

Outside was the penguin feeding and the sea lion training.  The penguin feeding was first.

Penguins being fed fish.

This penguin, in the front, is sitting on eggs.  The rocks around the nest are decoration to make the nest more homey.

Video of penguins being fed.

We learned all sorts of interesting information about penguins. There were three nests in the enclosure, so three sets of parents nursing eggs.  However, only two of the nests had real eggs; the third had fake eggs.  The conventional wisdom is that penguins mate for life, but that's not quite true; some do get divorced, and the most common reason for divorce is bad parenting (or, one penguin not pulling his or her parenting weight). Apparently, one of the penguin couples are not particularly good parents and the aquarium is thinking of taking their eggs away from them and giving them to another couple, so one nest has fake eggs in case that switch needs to be made. The couple with the fake eggs can't make babies of their own because both penguins are male.

The two penguins in the forefront are the male penguin couple.

In addition to learning about bad penguin parenting and penguin divorce, we also learned that there are gay penguins.  However, their gay couple is apparently a good parenting duo which is why the aquarium might give them the other couple's eggs to hatch and raise. It was a really sort of heartwarming and affirming story.

Penguins swimming

After the penguin feeding was the sea lion training. The sea lions are actually California sea lions.

This is Kim.

This is Amy.

Amy did this for quite a while before the training started, as though she were calling everyone over. 

Kim showing off the speed of California sea lions.

Amy jumping through hoops.

After the sea lion show, we headed back towards the city center to get some lunch before we went back to get our luggage.  On the way, we passed this church

which we went into. It turned out to be a Children's church. All the stained glass inside was created and made by kids.

There is also this angel who flies down to offer holy water.

The church is now run by a retired minister from the US mid-west and his wife, who is from Norway, which is who demonstrated the descending angel and told us about the stained glass.  They moved back to Norway in retirement so they would have good and free healthcare.

We went to the indoor fish market for lunch.

It's much like the outdoor fish market, except more upscale.  Here we ate at Fjellskål,

and like at the outdoor market had fish and chips, only this time we each got our own.

On the way back to the hotel to collect our luggage, we stopped again at St. John's Church,

which this time we could go in. The church was built between 1891 and 1894.

The ceiling construction was really my favorite part.

Then we gathered our luggage from the hotel and caught the airport bus to the airport for the hour plane ride back to Oslo.

This is the sign at the Bergen airport; it's by Ragnar Kjartansson entitled "This Must be the Place." It was the winner of the Bergen Airport Art competition in 2016. The question mark "contains an infinitude of possibilities."

Because we weren't getting back to Oslo until about 7 pm and we were leaving the next day for Iceland, we stayed at the Gardermoen Airport Hotel, within a few miles of the airport hotel. We basically got in in time to have dinner there as an end to the day.

My mom's soup and salad.

My hamburger and fries and beer.

Apparently, we didn't encounter any new trolls this day.  Sad.

Wednesday, June 13: To Iceland and the Silica Hotel/Blue Lagoon

After breakfast at the hotel

we headed to the airport for our flight to Iceland where we had about the equivalent of $10 left in Norwegian krone left, so we spent it on pastries like the ones we'd enjoyed in Bergen, only this one had fruit and custard, and water.

And in the airport, we encountered our last Norwegian troll (and, sadly, the last troll of Norway for the blog).

This troll was for sale, but we didn't buy him.  I think he would have required his own seat on the plane.

After navigating customs and baggage and getting our rental car at the Reykjavik airport (which was a whole ordeal-- don't think that picking up or dropping off a rental car in Iceland is an easy endeavor. It's time consuming and complicated and our process was made slower because the few people working at the rental car place we got a car from seemed to take a coffee break between each customer.  Getting the car was easier than returning it; if you have a flight to catch, get to the rental car return well before your flight), we headed out to Hotel Silica, next to the Blue Lagoon, for an evening of rest and relaxation.
Silica Hotel is certainly the most expensive place we stayed. It's a spa and resort located walking distance from the Blue Lagoon (to which you get free admission for a day when you stay at Silica Hotel) but also has its own private lagoon which is far less crowded than the touristy Blue Lagoon since only those who say in the hotel can use the Silica Lagoon.

The view from our first floor room was of the lava fields.

This was taken from our small porch. We couldn't actually walk out into this area because it's covered in moss and the moss is protected.  You're not supposed to walk on it anywhere is Iceland.

For the most part, lava fields look like what I imagine the surface of Mars or the moon looks like, and to some extent, I'm right.  Not these lava fields, but ones we saw later in the trip-- apparently the only place to see landscape like the one we would see a few days later is on Mars.  By the time we got settled into our hotel, it was close to 4 pm.

There is a sign that points you to a walking path towards Grinkdavik, a nearby town mostly known for being a fishing town, but also the path through which to view the lava fields. It's not entirely unreasonable that someone would walk it (Google maps says it would wake about an hour and twenty minutes), but we only walked a part of after we got into the hotel. Interspersed within the black lava were tiny hot pools with stunningly blue water

about which there were warning signs.

I stuck my hand in the edge of one and it was rather cool, so I don't know if it was the wrong time of year to be extremely hot or if I would have had to wade in to find the real heat. 

It really was other worldly and stunning, but we also wanted to have time to enjoy the Silica Lagoon before heading out for dinner. So, we returned from our relatively brief walk along the path to go to the lagoon.

The building on the left encloses the indoor section.

The Silica Lagoon is basically a warm, calming pool.  You enter from a changing/locker room into an indoor section (for when it's raining too hard to be outside) where you can pick up a variety of floating devices including inner tubes, noodles, and those arm float devices most usually seen on kids.  We chose noodles. You can't really drown or sink in the lagoon waters; it's too salty for that.  But, it adds to the relaxation to have something to help with the effortless floating.

Along the sides of the lagoon are buckets of silica for putting on your face and body. It's a natural trace mineral and the second most abundant element in the earth's crust.  It's supposed to be good for strengthening the skin barrier and deep cleansing.  Basically, you put it on your skin and wait 10 minutes.  It dries into a bit of a crust in that time and then you wash it off. Having done it only once, I have no idea if it actually works long term but both Silica and the Blue Lagoon sell small packages of silica based products for quite a lot of money, so some part of the beauty industry believes it's worthwhile and valuable.

We floated in the lagoon for a little more than an hour; it's really relaxing and then becomes a bit boring after a while since there's nothing to do but float. And then, we went back to our room to get ready for dinner at Lava, the restaurant at the Blue Lagoon.

The walk between the Silica Hotel and the Blue Lagoon is gorgeous- more lava fields with pools of sparking blue water.

Lava itself is a lovely restaurant with great views.

View from our table.

View out that window above.

Dinner itself was also really good.  It started with complimentary champagne (one more perk of being a guest coming from Silica hotel).

My mom actually enjoying her champagne, though I still wound up finishing it.

Bread served with butter topped with lava salt, which topped most butter in Iceland.

Appetizer: baked yellow and red beet salad

Grilled beef tenderloin

Lamb fillet and shoulder of lamb

Dessert: Ástarpungar and caramel (caramel chocolate mousse, vanilla ice cream, salted caramel on house made fried dough, much like doughnuts).   We split this dessert-- and could have eaten an entire jar of the caramel on it. They could really just serve that with a spoon.

The restaurant is right next to the actual lagoon.

The Blue Lagoon is much bigger and much more crowded than the private one at Silica. Visitors pay to stay for 3 hours.  

There is really no complete sundown in Iceland in the summer-- it's even brighter than Norway was. (Technically, there was supposed to be about 2 hours of darkness between the sunset around 12:30 and sunrise at 2:30 am, but it never went down), but by the time we were leaving dinner (after 10 pm), the sun was low enough in the sky to create some lovely sunset colors.

The walk back ended our day, even though "day" never really ended.

View from room at 11:30 pm

Thursday, June 14: Borgarnes and the Snæfellsnes Peninsula 

After breakfast at Silica Hotel

we decided to skip going to the actual Blue Lagoon (which really wouldn't have been much different than our time in the Silica Lagoon the day before), and instead begin our road trip up to Stykkishólmur.

One of the reasons to rent a car in Iceland is so that you can drive to places which aren't part of bus tours and which mainly go to large tourist destinations in the Golden Circle, places which are a day trip from Reykjavik. With a car, you can go at your own pace and go to other places.  And, you can pull over to take pictures of the landscape as you go.

Our first stop as we made our way up to and around the Snæfellsnes Peninsula was Borgarnes, one of the original settlement areas for the first Icelanders. Thus, it is home to the Settlement Center.

The Settlement Center sits by the harbour of a scenic point of Borgarfyjörður in an old warehouse

The museum itself contains an exhibit in two parts about Icelands earliest days.  Part one discusses the original settlements of Iceland from the first settlers who were running away from the Norwegian King, covering the settlement of approximately the first 350 people to come to Iceland starting about 850 A.D.  Part two is Egils Saga, the story of Egill Skalla-Grimsson, the son of one of the first settlers, which casts Egill as both a viscous fighter and a great poet. The exhibit contains almost life-size dioramas depicting scenes from these two historical tales; unfortunately, I have no pictures because photos were not allowed. (We did go to a Viking Museum later in our trip with a similar kind of exhibit that allowed pictures, so that gives a sense of what this one was like.)

Part of the story of Egill is ball game that took place when Egill was 12 during which he killed his friend who was beating him.  His father later went after him but Egill's nanny, Þorgerður Brák, intervened and Egill's father chased her to a cliff where she jumped into the water.  Egill's father threw a bolder at her with such force that she never resurfaced.

This is supposedly the boulder that was thrown at Þorgerður Brák 

This is the monument dedicated to Þorgerður Brák's bravery.

After touring the Settlement Center, we went to the attached restaurant for lunch.  The Settlement Center restaurant is located in one of the oldest houses in Borgarnes, built about 1877-1878.

There is a menu, but we decided to eat the "wellness" lunch buffet, which features soup, salad, pasta, and fresh bread.

And then we got back in the car to continue our drive around the peninsula from Borgarnese to the Ytri Tunga Beach.

Ytri Tunga Beach, on the mid-south portion of the peninsula, is the best seal watching destination in Iceland.  There are grey seals and harbour seals

It was hard to get more than their heads bobbing in the water, but there are 3 here.

close to the shoreline of the rocky beach.

Seal swimming

Beach and land/mountains around

 From Ytri Tunga, we drove west past waterfalls

to Arnastrapi, a small coastal village

 with monuments and memorials.

This monument was built in 1985 by Ragnar Kjartansson (the same artist who did the Bergen airport sign). It's his representation of Bárður Snæfellsás, the deity of Mt. Snæfell.

This is a memorial to the poet Guðmundur Bergþórsson.

There is also a lovely view of the mountains, which are quite colorful.

Because of the fog, it's hard to see all the colors in the mountains, but they reminded me a bit of the Painted Desert in Arizona.

From here, we backtracked a little to go to Rauðfeldsgjá Ravine

which we fully intended to explore. It's a huge cleft that runs vertically down a cliff face and has a mossy grotto within.  However, it's pretty steep and the day we were there was so windy that is was difficult to even get a few feet up (especially since we were walking into the wind), so we moved on to drive through Snæfellsjökull National Park.

It was our intention to drive to the volcano and glacier that are the center of the national park. However, to access them, you need to take an F-road. An f-road is a highland road that requires a 4x4 vehicle to drive, and even then, they may be too treacherous to drive during parts of the year. They aren't really roads but rather tracks that vehicles have passed over before filled with potholes and sometimes covered by water. (We hired a vehicle a couple days later to go through Laki Park, which is only accessible by f-roads.  I have video of what it looks like there.)  We didn't have a 4x4, so we couldn't get to the volcano or glacier. We could just drive through the park and admire the scenery.

We did stop in the park at Lóndrangar. cliffs which were supposedly formed by elves to be their church.

We climbed pretty close to where the cliff formation was, against the wind.  It's so windy here that there are warning signs.

My favorite part is that to bird watch, you have to lie on the ground so as not to get blown away.

We drove through the rest of the park, which makes up a large part of the western section of the peninsula

and headed to Stykkishólmur where we were based for a couple nights. Stykkishólmur, located on a natural harbour tipped by a basalt islet on, pretty much, the northernmost tip of the peninsula, is the largest town on the peninsula. It's population is is a little less than 1200 people, which makes it pretty big.

Rather than a hotel, we stayed in a small cottage, Galdro Cottage

with a lovely view of the water.

We settled in and then headed back out to find dinner.  We wound up at Narfeyrarstofa, a restaurant recommended by the man we rented the cottage from.

A little later, a film crew came in to eat; the place was relatively full, so they wound up eating and filming (I have no idea what for) at that bench in the left of the picture.

Bread, this time with the lava salt on the side of the butter.

My mom got a hamburger.

I had the special of the day, mussels. They were perhaps the largest ones I've ever had.

It had taken a long time to drive from the Blue Lagoon to Stykkishólmur, so it was quite late by the time we finished dinner, so we returned to the cottage, thus ending our day.

Midnight sky in Stykkishólmur.

Friday, June 15: Stykkishólmur

We were supposed to be going to Ólafsvík to go whale watching, but that trip got canceled due to weather.  So, instead we booked a boat trip, the Viking Sushi Tour, which cruised through the fjord around Stykkishólmur.  That wasn't until 3 in the afternoon, however, so we spent the day touring around.

We stopped first at the Nesbraud bakery for breakfast.

Coffee, yogurt and a caramel coated sticky bun (which I couldn't finish so it also became a snack later)

And then headed to Helgafell, a "mountain" a few miles outside of Stykkishólmur. 

The mountain (which is only about 73 meters) is located on a small sheep farm 

and so was one of the few natural scenic places we had to pay for (about the equivalent of $4 though, so not bad). The mountain itself is thought to be magical. It was once revered by worshippers of Þor (or, Thor-- as in the g-d of thunder).  In the late 10th century, when prominent worshippers of Þor converted to Christianity, a church was built on top of the mountain.  The remains are still there.

There is also a sundial that remains at the top.

According to legend, if you can climb to the top without speaking or looking back, you'll be granted three wishes. We both managed to do this.  Mine haven't come true yet, but maybe it takes a while. 

From the top of the mountain, you can see the whole farm

 as well as Breiðafjörður Bay, the waters surrounding Stykkishólmur.

At the bottom of the mountain, where you pay to climb up, is also a little store that sells gloves and hats handmade from the wool of sheep on the farm.  At this point, I was feeling like I had underestimated how cold I was going to be; the temperature was as advertised, but Iceland is really windy and that makes it feel quite a bit colder. So, I bought a pair of wool mittens which I was really grateful for for the rest of our trip; plus, they seemed  like a nicely authentic and unique souvenir. 

It's also possible to walk around the farm.  

The church currently on the property was built around 1903.

And you can get pretty close to the sheep, one of which may or may not have been the one whose wool my mittens came from.

If you look closely, you can that this sheep has been recently shorn.

From Helgafell, we drove back into Stykkishólmur, passing horses which were close to the road along the way.

There are horses, sheep and goats running pretty free all over Iceland, but contrary to popular belief, none of the horses are actually wild.  They all belong to someone. We kept driving past fields of horses, but these were some of the only few that hung out close to the road. 

Back in Stykkishólmur, we decided to visit the three museums in town: the Volcano Museum, Library of Water and the Norwegian House. All three are pretty small and located near one another (since the whole town can be walked in about 10 minutes). We went first to the Volcano Museum since you have to go there to buy an admission ticket to all three as well as to get the code to the door to get into the Library of Water. 

The Volcano Museum is located in an old cinema. It contains a variety of displays about volcanoes, including not only examples of volcanic rock, 

Table of the principle rock types found in Iceland.

and a couple movies about volcanic eruptions, but also art featuring volcanoes.

This is a piece by Andy Warhol, "Vesuvius Eruption" 1985

This is a 19th centuryTiffany stained glass window depicting a volcanic eruption, probably from a synagogue. 

Because the building itself was once a movie theater, there are also old movie posters for movies that feature volcanoes hanging throughout (some classics... others not). 

After the volcano museum, we climbed up to the Libary of Water which is nice spot from which to get scenic pictures of all of Stykkishólmur.

This is pretty much the whole town in one panoramic view.

The building in the top middle of the photo is Stykkishólmskirkja, the town's very modern church built to look like a Viking ship.

The Library of Water is an art exhibit of 24 glass pillars filled with Icelandic glacier water created by Roni Horn, an American artist.

Looking at the pillars themselves isn't particularly interesting, but looking through them out the windows and onto town creates unique views of the scenery.

And, there's the fun-house effect of taking pictures of people through them.

Our last museum stop was the Norwegian House, a home built in 1832 by Arni Ó. Thorlacius, a local fishing vessel owner and entrepreneur. 

It was one of the first wood-framed, two story residences and one of the three largest homes in Iceland at the time. 

The first floor contains exhibitions connected to the museum, like family history.

The second floor is a series of different rooms furnished as an upper-class 19th century house would have been.

And, there's an attic with storage of a variety of historical items from the local district.

After our three museum visits, we didn't have much time before our Viking Sushi tour, so we headed down to the waterfront and the boat.

The Viking Sushi tour is basically a bird-watching tour around a variety of small islands located throughout Breiðafjörður Bay. 

Tiny house on an island.

The main birds we saw were plovers, shags and puffins

sitting on nests on the side of the cliff

Puffins-- they aren't very big, so this was the best closeup I could get from the boat.

as well as white-tailed eagles in their nest.

The eagle is in the top middle of the picture.

We did also see a seal sunbathing, before it decided to slip back into the waters.

It's a sushi tour because about halfway through, the boat stops and nets are dropped to dredge the bottom of the bay for fresh seafood which is then served raw to those on-board.

Net descending

Full net being emptied

Several varieties of sea life were pulled from the waters including starfish, clams, hermit crabs, scallops and sea urchins.

The starfish were pretty quickly tossed back in the water.

Crab that made a break for it.

Hermit crab coming out of its shell

Clams opening and closing

What we could eat on board where scallops shucked in front of us

as well as the egg sacs (caviar) that were in some of them

and sea urchin (which were also cut open for eating, but I don't seem to have a picture of one open).

The cruise is a little more than 2 hours long, and returned us back to the harbour. After the cruise, we tried to go see the church, but got there shortly after it closed so we never got to go inside.

I did peak through the front windows though and it looked pretty plain-- a lot more interesting from the outside from what I could tell. We went back to the cottage for a bit and then headed back out to dinner at Skurinn, a local burger place.

Seats were reserved for those coming to watch the World Cup which began while we were in Iceland. The man in this picture was actually one of the guys shucking scallops and urchins for us on the boat tour.

The burgers come wrapped in paper-- this is my salsa burger with tortilla chips. 

My mom's traditional burger with a regular and sweet potato fry mixture.

unwrapped burger

And, that ended our last day in Stykkishólmur.

This is about midnight-- it was the sunniest part of the day. The car is our rental car which looks even brighter yellow in the midnight sun.

Saturday, June 16: Þingellir National Park, Geysir, Gullfoss, and the Drive to Kirkjubæjarklaustur

After stopping back at the bakery for coffee, we headed back on the road to travel the Golden Circle before driving south to Kirkjubæjarklaustur.  The Golden Circle is circular route that can be done by tour bus from Reykjavik and takes you through some of the major natural spectacles of Iceland.  We hit three big ones, starting first with Þingellir National Park. The drive itself is stunning. 

Þingellir National Park was the site of the first democratic parliament in 930 AD and continued to serve as the meeting place until 1271 when governance was surrendered to Norway. The site functioned as a courtroom until 1798 when it was dissolved.  When the parliament regained power in 1843, it relocated its meetings to Reykjavik. 

The park  is quite big and you drive through it for quite a while

before reaching the main attraction spot (or, rather, the parking lot for it), the plain and the tectonic plates it sits on top of. 

There are parking lots at multiple locations; depending on which you wind up in, it's a shorter or longer climb. (There is a parking lot all the way at the top, but it's only for tour buses.)

Þingellir plain is situated on the tectonic plates where North America and Europe are tearing away from each other. So, you can see rifts  and fissures and there's a path that runs along the most famous one, Almannagjá.

There's a bridge over a particularly precarious part.

At the top, we first stopped to get something to eat after driving for a while and climbing up. The gift shop at the top had prepackaged sandwiches.

Part of the reason to make the climb is the view.

 The panoramic is lovely, but it's gorgeous from lower down as well.

It doesn't look nearly as high up from below as it felt when we were there; you can see people standing at the top which is where the previous pictures were taken from.  (You can also see the yellow car to the left of the picture; that's our rental car.  We could find it in any parking lot.)

On the park grounds are also a little farmhouse

The farmhouse was built in 1930. Now it's the park warden's office and the summer house for the prime minister.

 and a tiny church.

The original church on this site was one of the oldest in Iceland, built in the 11th century. This one was built in 1859.

From the park, we continued along the Golden Circle route to Geysir, home of the Great Geysir which has been active for about 800 years.  However, it hasn't been particularly active since 1916.  The area, however, has many geysers, including Strokkur, which are active. 

The smoke from the individual pools is evident as you drive up.

Strokkur is the big attraction; it erupts every 5 to 10 minutes.

Strokkur erupting from close by.

Strokkur erupting from farther away.

There are other hot springs as well; they produce a lot of steam and are stunningly blue, though they don't erupt.

There is a mountain nearby as well. We didn't climb all they way, but you really only have to go to the base to get a sense of how many hot springs are in the area.

The smoke rising comes from many individual springs. 

The other geyser which erupts almost constantly is Litli Geysir (or, Little Geysir).

The last big attraction on the Golden Circle route is Gullfoss (Golden Waterfall), the most famous waterfall in Iceland.

Gullfoss from above

Gullfoss has been a natural reserve since 1975. When we got there, it was raining pretty hard, which is somewhat evident in the video.

There are stairs leading down to a path to walk along the waterfall which allow you to get pretty close.

The stairs and path are to the right in this picture.

It did eventually stop raining and the sun came out for a short while, which created this lovely rainbow. The waterfall with the rainbow is what is pictured in every picture of it sold in tourist shops, so it was nice to get the iconic image of Gullfoss on my own.

We left Gullfoss around 6 pm to drive to Kirkjubæjarklaustur since it was still about three hours away; this turned into its own slightly harrowing adventure.  The GPS in our car told us to turn right out of the Gullfoss parking lot and continue along the same road we had been on which was fine for a while until it, without warning, became an F-road. The GPS was providing no alternative route (nor was the GoHere app on my phone), so we wound up on the F-road for a short while-- with all its potholes and sharp curves and gravel, until we ran across a local who told us that we 1) had to turn back because the road was going to get much worse and 2) provided an alternative route for getting to Kirkjubæjarklaustur.  There is a reason why you need a 4-wheel drive vehicle on an F-road and it was really evident why during our short time driving on one (which felt like a lot longer than it might have really been).  On our way back off the road, the local driver stopped another car headed the way we had been going, also not a 4-wheel drive vehicle, and told that car to turn back around too.  That driver than stopped us and asked if the road was really that bad.  We said we were turning around because the little bit we had driven by mistake was quite treacherous and we were advised it was only going to get worse, but I don't think that car ever turned around. At least, I never saw it behind us. I have no idea what happened; I can only assume (based on the driving adventure of the next day) that they got stuck at some point. 

Unfortunately, getting to the passable route, Route 1 (the Ring Road which encircles all of Iceland) which would take us to Kirkjubæjarklaustur meant backtracking quite a bit.  And so, what was supposed to be a three hour drive became a lot more than that.  (The F-roads were clearly the more direct paths as the GPS kept trying to get us to turn onto various ones, but having been down one and having local advice on where I really wanted to be, we didn't try another.) We were still in the car at 10:30 pm when the sun finally came out, making for a lovely scenic view out the front window. 

We got to Kirkjubæjarklaustur after 11 pm and then drove around the area for a while since the GPS couldn't find the actual place we were staying, the Efri-Vik Bungalows at the Hotel Laki.  I finally found a hotel with a bartender still working (or, just getting off of work) who directed us to the hotel.  It was about midnight when we checked in-- and we had to be up early the next day for our Secret Iceland tour.

Sunday, June 16: Kirkjubæjarklaustur and Vatnajokull National Park

Efri-Vik Bungalows are small cabins next to a hotel.

Next to the beds were a small ladder

which led to this attic space but I don't really know what it was for.

The bungalows themselves didn't have wifi, but we could go up to the hotel for access. And, we also had breakfast in the hotel, which was just up a small hill.  Before entering the hotel, there's a small pen with three horses.

After breakfast

Hotel dining room

we were picked up outside the hotel for our Secret Iceland tour.  Apparently, the day before there had been 11 people on the tour and the next day there were supposed to be 9. But, for whatever reason, on this day, it was just me and my mom on the tour.

It's called the Secret Iceland tour because many places we went are hard to access.  It required a vehicle like this

to traverse much of the terrain, which were all F-roads. Most of the tour takes place within Vatnajokull National Park which wasn't actually open to the public yet because the "roads" weren't ready.  But, this vehicle was specially fitted to be able to traverse the terrain so we were able to go.  I tried to capture the experience of driving along the roads.

This part of the road was in better condition than other parts, but you can still see how bumpy a ride it is.

In the summer, there's a company whose sole job is to drive around the park a couple times a day and rescue tourists who get stuck on the roads; many 4-wheel drive vehicles still can't really get through the sections of washed out roads because they are too low to the ground, so this isn't even really an area for the average 4-wheel drive car to access, though many try to.

Our first stop was at Mt. Laki. The trip is supposed to stop there for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours in order to climb the mountain.

The path starts with the markers in the right of the picture, goes across the top and then descends on the left.

This is the base of Mt. Laki. It's about 300 meters to the top, which is a lot higher up than it seems in this picture, partially because the top of the mountain is actually in fog.

That triangular hut is the dry "bathroom"-- sort of like an outhouse, but with no running water and no light in it.  Because the park wasn't open to the public yet, none of the bathrooms with running water were open either.  My mom braved using it. 

There is a path along the mountain which has been carved out for visitors to follow. Part of the reason for the path is to keep people from walking on the moss which is protected all over Iceland. Our guide had told us that the hike up was pretty easy; that was a little deceptive.

It was drizzling as we began to climb the mountain; however, as the elevation increased, that rain became sleet. We were walking from the mossy area in the forefront of the picture into the snowy area. 

The path pretty much cut through the snow so that we weren't walking directly in it, I'm sure, in part, because there have been visitors who came before us who had walked the same path. But, the temperature has also dropped considerably which is why there were still big areas of snow.  (I was really glad for the mittens I had bought two days before. I wore them the rest of the day.) Our guide had said that the day before, the fog had cleared as the people on the tour walked up the mountain.  That wasn't happening as we walked, 

so we were also walking up into the fog as well as pretty heavy sleet and forceful winds.

The idea was to get to the top of the mountain and then walk across the top to the other side and descend there and then walk along the large crater next to the mountain. We didn't quite do this; as we got really close to the top, my mom got a little nervous about continuing on in the heavy fog and sleet and I wasn't about to leave her on the side of a mountain, so rather than climb across the top, we hiked back down (having gotten probably the best pictures we were going to get in the fog) and walked around the base of the mountain to Laki Crater.

You can walk up

to see inside the crater.

We then drove to the top of another hill to get some pictures of stunning views (which I think we were supposed to get from Mt. Laki but couldn't see through the fog),

before driving to the next official stop on the tour, a spot overlooking Tjarnargígur, a crater filled with water.

You can see the platform overlooking the crater in the right corner; there are incredibly steep stairs that you can climb down to walk into the crater, but they were closed.  They are supposed to be open in summer months but I guess weren't open yet because the park wasn't open. 

Nearby is a shallower crater that we could walk into. 

These pictures are all taken from inside the crater. The walls aren't particularly high. 

This is about the highest point of the crater wall. 

After this crater stop, we continued the loop through the park, having to traverse washed out parts of road

to see other parts of the park.

including this small crater we could stand above and look into.

This photo doesn't really do it justice; it was a lot more colorful, with some bright pink colors, in person. But it wouldn't really come out right in pictures.

We exited the park again and headed to Fagrifoss (which means Beautiful Waterfall), a "hidden" waterfall. It's not so much hidden as difficult to access. We had to drive through another washed out road to get there. (On our way out, we passed a small 4-wheel drive vehicle presumably trying to get to the waterfall. I'm not sure if they made it.)

The last stop of the day was at Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon which was the only stop of the day where there were actually other people.

The canyon was carved by the Fjarðrá River and is about 2 million years old. It's 330 feet deep and a little over a mile long.  It was one of the hidden gems of Iceland until after 2015 when Justin Beiber featured it in his video "I'll Show You." Since then, it has begun booming as a tourist destination (it helps that it's basically the last spot before the road becomes an F-road, so it's accessible by any car).  In the past couple of years, the government has built an actual parking lot and bathrooms with running water to accommodate the tourists. It'll probably only be a few years before there's an actual tourist shop here as well.

The view changes as you walk along the path that follows the southern edge and there are a few overlooks which take you over the crater.

This is one of the overlook spots. It's built out over the crater but the railing is also really high. It's impossible to get a picture without a piece of the railing in it.

This was the last stop on the tour.  We got back to the hotel a little before 5 and sat in the lobby enjoying the complimentary tea and coffee, mostly just to warm up (once chilled and wet from walking up the mountain in the sleet, neither of us had really warmed up even though the temperature was warmer in the lower elevations, especially at Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon). We also took time to make reservations at the hotel restaurant before going back to the cabin to shower and take quick naps.

For dinner, we each had the lamb stew

which was the perfect warm, hearty meal to end the day. And we split skyrcake, which is a lot like cheesecake, with homemade sorbet for dessert.

Monday, June 18: Drive to Reykjavik

After breakfast, we headed back out to return to Reykjavik. The plan was to stop at the few scenic places between Kirkjubæjarklaustur and Reykjavik along Route 1 that we hadn't seen yet.

The first place we wound up stopping was Vik, the southernmost town in Iceland with a population of a little over 300 people, and its black pebble beach, Reynisfjara.

The sea stacks in the picture are called Reynisdrangur. Legend has it that they are the remains of trolls petrified by the morning sun.

Vik is also home the Ice Wear Factory.  It's part of a large store that sells lots of gear and souvenirs (in an even larger building that also has a grocery store and coffee shop).  Ice Wear is all over Iceland, but the store in Vik has the handmade sweaters

complete with labels that tell you who knitted them.

There is also a factory tour

or, what was advertised as a factory tour, which is actually window overlooking with large electric looms and one lone woman knitting.

Up on a hill 

is the church Víkurkirjkja.

The church was built between 1930 and 1934. The altarpiece

was painted by Brynjólfur Þórðarson, though it's a copy of an original work by Carl Black.

The stained glass

was done by Hrafnhildur Ágústsdóttir and reference different passages of scripture.

Because the church is up on a hill, it also offers a lovely panoramic view of Vik.

From Vik, we drove on, stopping at Drangurrin, a boulder with a house inset into it.

Supposedly, the boulder itself did not get there naturally, but was talked from Mt. Hrútafell by a showy strongman named Grettir Ásmundsson. There are caves beneath the rock where farmers kept their cows and hay and which are said to be home to elves who cared for the cows giving birth overnight. 

What is left of the interiors are somewhat in ruin.

Drangurrin sits beneath Eyjafjöll Mountain, best known for the volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, that erupted in 2010 sending ash through the sky and causing air travel problems for many countries. (There are t-shirts in souvenir shops that either phonetically try to demonstrate how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull or say "What part of Eyjafjallajökull don't you understand."  It's the one souvenir which seems to nod at how difficult Icelandic words to pronounce. And, I still can't pronounce this.)

Rather than have an adverse effect, the eruption is credited with garnering Iceland a lot of attention and starting the tourist boom in Iceland over the past several years. 

We stopped in Hvolsvöllur for lunch at Eldstó Art Cafe, which sold not only food but pottery glazed with volcanic substances like pumice.

Pottery for sale is displayed on shelves around the cafe.

We each had the Eldstó Chicken Salad.

From lunch, we continued our drive to Reykjavik

arriving at our hotel, The Storm Hotel, late afternoon.

After getting settled in, we headed out to explore Old Town Reykjavik a bit, heading first to Hallgrímskirja, an immense white concrete church which serves as a pretty good orienting landmark when first getting your bearings in the Old Town.

It's a Lutheran Church, and the largest church in Iceland, named for the most renowned Icelandic poet, Hallgrímur Pétursson. Building of the church began in 1945, but it was built in stages, so whole church wasn't consecrated until 1986.  Outside the church is a statue of Leifur Eiríksson (or Leif Eriksson in English), one of the best known heroes of the Viking Age.

The statue itself was a gift from the US and recognizes his discovery of America about 1000 years before Christopher Columbus. The statue itself, designed in 1929, predates the church by about 15 years. 

Inside the church is rather simple.

The organ has 5275 pipes and was installed in 1992.

It is possible to pay to take the elevator 74.5 meters up into the bell tower to get scenic views of the city. 

From Hallgrimskirkja, we wandered through the Old Town a bit, down to Tjörnin Lake

and then towards the waterfront harbour of Reykjavik. 

What I don't have pictures or video of is the boy who climbed down the rocks, took off most of his clothes, and jumped into what I'm assuming was the freezing cold water.

which is also the site of Harpa, the very modern Reykjavik concert hall (and the meeting spot for our food tour the next day).

By now, we were getting hungry, so we headed back to the Old Town to find someplace for dinner and stumbled across a French bistro, Le Bistro Boissons.

We wound up ordering raclette which necessitated moving us to the upstairs seating 

to a table where the grille could be plugged in.  When we had raclette in Switzerland, it was served to us with the toppings and melted cheese placed over the potatoes for us. However, this was much more do it yourself.  We were served all the possible vegetable toppings in one bowl, potatoes in another, meat toppings on a plate, and cheese separately to be melted as needed.

Potatoes were cooking on the top grille; meats could be grilled there too.  And cheese was melted underneath and poured over it all.

This was supposed to be a two person serving; it could have served many more, so there was quite a bit left over. 

From Le Bistro Boissons, we headed back to the hotel, past some of the street art in Reykjavik (of which there is much more to come).

I asked the next day about if the mittens on the gate had special significance, but they don't.  Someone put one lost mitten on the gate and others kept contributing.

And that was the end of the day, not that the view from the hotel window suggested nightfall.

Reykjavik 10 PM

Tuesday, June 19: Reykjavik and Food Tour

We had a food tour scheduled, but it wasn't until the afternoon, so we had time to see a couple museums first. After breakfast at the hotel

we headed out to walk by the waterfront towards our destination. Along the way we passed the Solfar Sun Voyager statue.

This sculpture won the 1986 contest for an outdoor sculpture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the city.  It was created by Jón Gunnar Ámason; many people think it's supposed to be a Viking ship, but it's really supposed to be a dreamboat or an ode to the sun. Replicas of it are in every souvenir shop in Reykjavik. 

We were on our way to the Whales of Iceland Museum but had to detour a bit from the route because of construction, so we wound through Austurvöllur, a public square where Parliament is located.

Parliament: the building was completed in 1881.

Reykjavik Cathedral: it was consecrated in 1796 and then underwent restoration in 1879.

Walking to the museum, we also passed the only troll we came across in all of Iceland.

Viking troll-- though we were told many times that real Vikings didn't have horns on their helmets. But, he's a troll, not a Viking.

The Whales of Iceland Museum

is a bit out of the way, located in the Grandi area which used to be the heart of the fishing industry. Visiting seemed like one way to make up for our missed whale watching trip. The museum contains life-size models of all the whales which can be found in Icelandic waters. There's an audio guided tour which provided information about all the whales as well as electronic displays next to each model. The museum itself is fairly dark in order to give it an underwater feel. 

Whale skeleton

On a building near the museum is another example of some of Reykjavik's street art.

Near the Whales of Iceland museum is the Saga Museum, a Viking history that covers the first settlers,the Viking settelment in 874, Leif Eriksson's discovery of America, the founding of the first parliament, and many epic clan feuds. The history is told through full scale silicone figures (quite similar to the kinds of displays in the museum in Borgarnes).

This diorama was part of this museum's telling of Egill's Saga. This is father and son working together. 

After the second museum, we headed back towards Harpa to meet our tour guide for the food tour.

The food tour itself was a pretty large group, one of the larger ones I've been a part of. Most of the group was made up of a group of women on a yoga retreat and then six of us who weren't part of the retreat and our tour guide, Gudny.

 Near Harpa is Arnarhóll Hill with a statue of Ingólfur Arnarson, the first settler of Reykjavik who arrived in about 874.

Apparently, it's a popular picnic and sunbathing spot on sunny, warm days, which (like all the other days in Iceland), this was not. In fact, it rained through most of our food tour-- but by now we were pretty used to that.

Our first food stop was at a traditional Icelandic pub called Islenski Barinn 

where we had meat soup and einstök white ale.

My mom after trying the white ale.  The meat soup was really good.
At this place, a nearby table not associated with the food tour had ordered the fermented shark appetizer, which I'm sort of convinced is put on "traditional" Icelandic menus just so they can make fun of the tourists who order it.  One of the women in our tour did try it when offered; I"ll try pretty much anything, but after watching her face, even I wasn't going to try fermented shark.

Our next stop was the Ostabúðin Cheese Shop where we had a selection of cheese and meats.

The cheeses from left to right: black gouda, gull oster, and blue cheese.
The meats from left to right are lamb, horse and geese with a raspberry and champagne vinaigrette. Horse meat is something of a delicacy and hard to get as horses aren't raised for meat in Iceland.  However, they do believe in making use of everything, so when horses die, if it's possible, they are then butchered for their meat.
The raspberry and champagne vinaigrette was really good and sold in the shop. I brought a jar home to use as salad dressing. It's gone now. 

Our next stop was at Cafe Loki which is located next to Hallgrimskirkja. On our way to Cafe Loki, we passed this building in the Old Town.

Until 1975, this was the only prison in Iceland. 

At Cafe Loki, we had the rye bread ice cream

which is made from the restaurants homemade rye bread. It's amazing-- someone else in the world needs to make rye bread ice cream.

From there, we walked around Reykjavik a bit, passing a lot of street art as we went.  

This one seemed a little strange for a playground.

Gudny also pointed out the small figures attached to the tops of street signs.

No one knows who keeps attaching the figurines to the street signs and for a while the city was removing them, but they kept appearing, so now the city leaves them. 

Our next stop was a hot dog stand, Bæjarins Bestu.

The hot dog stand was founded in 1937 and makes hot dogs mostly from lamb.  The famous "the works" hot dog is then topped with mustard, ketchup, remulaði (a mayo based relish), regular onions and deep friend onions.

In 2006, The Guardian voted the stand the best hot dog stand in Europe. 

Our next stop was on the waterfront near where boats dock, 

at Kopar

where we had creamed rock crab soup served in jelly jars.

The broth of this soup was really good. But it was also filled with shrimp which I really don't like. Also, after the hot dog, I was pretty full.  A hot dog alone could have been a whole meal.

Before getting to our last stop, we walked through a small square where tv screens were set up to watch the World Cup.

This wasn't a game Iceland was playing in, so not too many people were braving standing in the rain to watch.  When the games featuring Iceland were on, there were screens all over Reykjavic including at Arnarhóll Hill and Tjörnin Lake.

Our last stop was at Apótek, a hotel (which just happened to be where all the women on the yoga retreat were staying) with a fancy restaurant with gourmet desserts.

Here, we had coffee and tea and a peach mousse cake with sorbet 

which was so good, I finished it despite being full. 

The food tour went until close to 5 and this was the last day of our 2 week tour of Norway and Iceland, so we were pretty exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel to rest a bit, passing a couple more examples of street art.

Street art is also educational-- teaching the locals how to tie their ties. 

Eventually, we decided to venture back out for a light dinner. We went to Svarta Kaffið, a bar 

which, by the time we got there (about 9 PM), was serving only soup in bread bowls. (There's a larger menu earlier in the day, but after 8:30, soup is the only thing served until close.) There was a choice of one of two soups. This was the meat soup option.

And that was the end of our last night in Iceland.

Midnight in Reykjavik when the sun finally came out.

Wednesday, June 20: Laugar Spa and Flying Home

Our last day in Iceland was the only time that it was a fully sunny and somewhat warm day (in the low 50s).

We could have gone on a quick whale watching tour before having to return the car and get to the airport around 2 pm, but my mom was tired of being cold and wet (which we really had been for the past week). So, instead, we booked chocolate massages at Laugar Spa, a fitness and wellness center and pool in a slightly more suburban area of Reykjavik. There are no pictures of the spa because cell phones and cameras weren't allowed. But, it's a luxury spa with sauna rooms of varying temperatures, hot tubs (which we enjoyed before and after the massage) and ice baths (which we did not try) as well as an outdoor swimming pool which was really crowded since sunny and 50 degrees is a nice summer day in Iceland. (The pool itself is heated, so that part makes sense.  But, the locals were also lying on the deck chairs in bathing suits and kids were running around in wet suits which was just one more demonstration that they are a heartier people.  We largely used the indoor amenities.) After the hour long massage, which was incredible, especially because it included being scrubbed all over with melted chocolate, so I smelled like chocolate for the rest of the day, we had lunch in the cafe-- a goat cheese salad, relaxed a little more in the hot tub, and then got dressed to go to the airport and return the rental car (which was a very long process, and I have the feeling it wasn't as arduous for us as it was for some others-- plan accordingly if you're returning a car and catching a flight) and returned to the US.