The Long and Winding Road - Day 10

Today we make our way back to Reykjavik!  We made our first stop at the Ingjaldsholl Church which was a super cute church up on a hill.  Apparently it's one of the oldest churches in Iceland and they claim maybe even the world!  There has been a church of some form standing on this site from at least they year 1211.  It claims to have had Christopher Columbus visit when he was discovering the world!

Our next stop was the Fishermen's Museum in the town of Rif.  It was closed because we're here on the off season, but the property has lots of great things to see!

There were pieces of old whale bone littering the lawn!

I love these turf houses! Who needs shingles anyway?!

Our next stop was a walk to see this Írskrabrunnur (Irish Well).  That is an ancient whale bone marking the top.

This area was also surrounded by lava flows! Angus wanted to know what if felt like to walk on, so he went out off the path to take a few steps!

After seeing so many black beaches, it was almost strange to see white sand here!

Our next stop was this light house Saxholsbarg in Ondverdarnes.  There are great cliffs for bird watching here!

Our next stop was this very busy tourist stop Djupalonssandur.  A pebble beach with a few great sights.

Scattered across the beach there are pieces of the Epine Trawler shipwreck.  They say that this beach is actually haunted!

There are also these old lifting stones used to test the strength of sailors in training.  The largest is called Fullsterkur and weighs 154 kg, the second is Halfsterkur and weighs 100 kg, third is Halfdraettingur weighing 54 kg and finally Amlodi meaning Weakling at 23 kg.

Our next stop was in Hellnar where we stopped for a coffee break and some play time.  We enjoyed coffee with a couple from Manhattan who were travelling with their little guy Everette! Everett's dad is a photographer and we had fun comparing our trips!  We have bumped into them a few times on this trip.

One of the things were were looking forward to in this area was seeing Snæfellsjökull - the mountain that inspired the story "Journey to the Centre of the Earth".  Unfortunately due to the weather, all we got to see was fog!

We finally made it to Reykjavik, and it was very rainy!! We felt that Logan deserved some play time, so we went puddle jumping!

Tomorrow we make our way back to the airport to head home!

**UPDATE:

Our flight ended up being delayed for 2 hours due to an air traffic controller strike, but the flight went great!

Logan was quite happy the entire flight and enjoyed playing with stickers (see them on his shirt).  He eventually fell asleep and slept until we got home!

The Long and Winding Road - Day 9

We were glad to be leaving Sauðárkrókur this morning to make our way to the Snæfellsnes peninsula.  

There are so many beautiful waterfalls on the road side in Iceland, but we decided to get out and take a picture of this one.  It is less impressive in photos, but was quite pretty!

the landscape started changing as we made our way west.  On the island closest to us in this picture, you can see an old shipwreck!

As we drove, the weather turned quite rainy, and very very windy!

We took a brief drive off of the highway to explore the Berserkjahraun lava fields.  The rocks were so pretty covered in moss!

Looking back at our car while we were taking pictures, it looked like a car advertisement!

Continuing on, we came across this pretty waterfall called Kirkjufellsfoss.  It was soooo windy and rainy  Angus and I took turns walking up to the bridge from the car.  

Across the street is Kirkjufell Mountain, which was hidden underneath the fog.

We stopped at the Saga Centre in Grundarfjörður where we enjoyed a hot cup of coffee and Logan enjoyed some play time before driving to our hostel in Ólafsvík.  After checking in and making dinner, we decided to go out for a drive.  The wind was pretty extreme, and Angus was feeling adventurous, so he climbed up Saxholl - a dead volcano.  He came back to the car very wet!

On our way back to the hostel for the night, we spotted a large flock of terns.  There were many warning signs up so that tourists didn't get attacked by them!

Tomorrow we continue our journey around the Snæfellsnes Peninsula and head back to Reykjavik!

The Long and Winding Road - Day 8

We woke up this morning in Akureyri with high hopes of seeing whales! We were not disappointed! Across the street from our hostel was a whale watching company, and we were able to hop on the 9am boat!

Logan was not thrilled with wearing his "boat coat" again, but got over it pretty quickly.

When we left the dock, we almost immediately saw dolphins jumping in the bay.  It wasn't 5 minutes later that we saw our first whale.  Logan's initial reaction was to say "cute!"

We saw a few whales after that first one, and it was always exciting to see them blow the water!

This boat that we were on was nice because there was an indoor area where we could take Logan to sit out of the wind. 

3 hours was a little bit long for this guy, but the hot chocolate helped to provide some entertainment!

After the boat ride, we had our lunch, and started to make our way around the Tröllaskagi peninsula.  We had heard many reviews about how magically breath taking this drive would be.  We found it to be a bit lacklustre...perhaps because we had already seen some beautiful drives in the East that were very similar to this one.  Also, the drive was taken up by many one way 6-8km long mountain tunnels which took away from any views. 

We were all pretty tired, and found this little spot to have a 30 minute car nap!!



We made our way to our hostel in Sauðárkrókur in North-West Iceland.  After spending all day in the car, we took Logan for a run on the beach where he was very excited to find lots of sea shells to throw in the water!

Tomorrow we drive to the Snæfellsnes peninsula!