Saturday was a travel day. We drove 5 hrs from Snaefellsness to Akureryi and took a side trip that probably added another 1.5 hrs.
We stopped for lunch and there was a grocery store nearby, so we went to check it out. There was this bag of frozen avocados.
Our side trip was Vatsnes to see seals. We kept stopping at viewpoints, but we didn’t see any! I googled to see if it was a winter thing, but the internet said May-July. So it was just us.
We’ve seen a lot of ADV motorcycles. There are a lot of gravel roads so it seems like the way to go.
We are not sure if these pens are for sheep or horses. We saw these a couple of times.
This is a cool rock. The most photographed in northern Iceland, apparently.
We got in to Akureryi and got checked in and could not get a dinner reservation at the last minute for a Saturday night. So we ordered from the bar menu at our hotel and Julie learned how to use the Icelandic equivalent of OpenTable for our next few dinners…in Icelandic. The text messages and emails are in English, but the app is not. Adorable.
Our dinner order got lost, so the bartender offered us any drink we wanted on the house. We said we don’t really drink, so he said how about ice cream? So we had ice cream while waiting for our duck salad and charcuterie.
We were pretty tired and crashed.
Sunday was laundry day. The hotel’s laundry service only operates during the week. There were two (2) places to do laundry in town, the 2nd largest city in Iceland. One had 2 machines and the other had 3, so we went to the place that had 3. Well, they’re being repaired. So we headed to the other one at a hostel thinking we’re going to have to spend our entire day on laundry now. But we lucked out bc no one was using the laundromat, which was in a shed behind the hostel. The machines were pretty small and we had to use both. Julie figured out another app (which did have an English option) to activate the machines via bluetooth and by the time we washed and dried 2 loads, it came to $40. Yikes! Next time we’ll just have an additional carry on and not have to spend our time chasing laundry. Also, the lowest temperature setting was 20* C (68* F) and Julie’s white bras are no longer white.
Julie went to a bookstore while laundry was running and found the “Books of Iceland” section featuring books by Icelandic authors. I got 2 books and started reading one of them while waiting on laundry. It is an Icelandic woman’s story of being a sheep farmer and standing up to a power company and getting in to local politics and is super interesting.
We went for a short hike/walk on a path along the river and got to see a hydroelectric power station.
We were parked next to the mall, so we went to check it out and the most interesting store was another grocery store. Check out this machine that makes orange juice.
Back to the hotel to read before dinner. I was enjoying my book so much that I wanted to get a couple more books from that section and show Jaron. After I picked out 6 books I said ok, it’s time to leave. My purchase qualified for a VAT refund. I told Jaron not to let me come in there again. I took the nearest door out instead of the one closest to where we parked bc I didn’t trust myself to walk past the Books of Iceland display again.
Dinner was great at a seafood focused restaurant, and then we got ice cream which turned out to be soft serve. We sat outside and it was getting cold, and I was holding something cold, and putting something cold in my mouth. Brrrrrr.
Back home to read some more and sort laundry now that hanging items had dried.
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