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Akureyri

Wednesday, 8:30pm
Hotel Reykjahlid, Myvatn

This morning the skies over Lake Myvatn were overcast, which would have been disappointing for our original plan, which was to rent bikes and cycle around the lake. Fortunately we’d already decided to ditch that plan and head to Akureyri instead. When we got there it was sunny. Yay for sloth!

After a quick visit to the helpful information centre we headed into downtown Akureyri (that is to say, the pedestrian street, a block away) and found the Blue Cup Café. This was an exceedingly convivial spot for coffees, a tasty lunch, and a large, comfortable table for sitting and playing Scrabble for a while. Which we did. (It was a tight match but Anne was kind enough to let me play WISPY onto a triple word — off of a hanging “E” to make EW. We checked just now and EW is not in the Scrabble dictionary. With WISPY I was able to win, barely.)

Anyway.

After our match we set out to see some of the town. We shopped briefly along the street, and then headed somewhat indirectly to the Art Museum, which was tiny but free and had some very nice sculptures. (By the way, Icelandic sculptures seem to be highly influenced by Inuit work.)

After the gallery we walked along the upper road past the cathedral, with lovely views down to the harbour below. We stopped at Byrja for ice cream (oldest independent ice cream maker in Iceland) and walked back up to the lovely (also free) botanical garden.

Then we drove back to Myvatn. By this time the weather had cleared up and we were able to stop for some nice photos. Back at the lake we stopped in the village south of Reykjahlid, to visit the Cow Café, Vogafjos. (See prior post.)

To end the day in style, we went to the Myvatn Nature Baths for a lovely soak in the steam room, hot tub and large, naturally heated mineral pool. Wunderbar!

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