Waterfalls and Glaciers: Akureyri

Akureyri may be Iceland's second largest city (when all of Reykjavik's suburbs are counted as one municipality) but its population of less than twenty thousand wouldn't make it stand out among coastal villages in the rest of Europe. Many Ring Road travelers just stop by for a few hours or even bypass it completely but we had chosen it for our only two-night stay aside from Reykjavik. We had been moving nonstop for a week at this point and we needed a moment to slow down for a little and enjoy just one day without packing our bags and jumping back on the road. I knew that Akureyri had a pleasant shopping street, an interesting church, and a botanical garden but not much else about the city.

We slept a little bit later than usual, but not much, and drove down from our guesthouse for breakfast. Kaffi Ilmur is located in a hundred-year-old house halfway up a hill at the end of Hafnarstræti, the main commercial street of Akureyri. It's the most popular place in town for breakfast for locals and tourists alike but fortunately it was only moderately busy on a Monday morning. Mei Ling went inside and ordered while I supervised the kids at the playground at the base of the hill. The food was good enough to justify the reputation and it was pleasant to watch the colorful street and the busy little playground while we ate.

A stroll down Hafnarstræti barely took half an hour even though we stopped for a look in most of the small stores on the street. The buildings were painted in vivid colors and some had little steeples to accentuate their fairy tale character.

From the corner we could see the town's landmark church Akureyrarkirkja atop a steep hill. The church has the same architect as the renowned Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik although it doesn't boast the same awesome dimensions. Nevertheless its position at the apex of several exhausting flights of stairs and its geometrical, modernist facade endow the church with substantial gravitas. The church was closed for a ceremony so we couldn't see the famous stained glass windows or the ship suspended from the ceiling but we enjoyed the climb and the view of the harbor from the top of the hill.

We came down the other side of the hill to Kaupvangsstræti, the other main street in the center of town. We were hoping to look around the Deiglan art gallery but it was closed until the afternoon. Across the street we saw the sidewalk pavers in front of the Akureyri Art Museum were painted like a quilt of bright colors. Planters next to the building were overflowing with colorful flowers. It seemed that someone had put a great deal of effort into beautifying this part of the street. Even the trash receptacles were covered with thick, woven frog cozies. We were so entranced by the vibrant display we almost didn't notice the woman who was working on a paper mache sculpture just outside of an open studio in the same building as the museum.

The artist seemed pleased to encounter the kids and we stopped to chat with her for a while once it was clear we weren't disturbing our work. She was gracious enough to invite us all to tour her studio and didn't seem the slightest bit concerned about any of the kids damaging the artwork that was stacked everywhere. She worked in an extraordinary variety of media and it was clear she was the person remarkable for the frog cozies on the garbage receptacles.

At this point we had seen everything of any possible interest to us downtown and it was still morning. If we spent a couple of hours in the Botanical Garden we'd be finished by two with six hours to go before dinner. I started searching for other things to do near Akureyri but the north of Iceland is far less interesting than the south when it comes to outdoor activities and scenic vistas. Eventually I settled on the Laufás Museum, a vicarage composed of nineteenth century turf houses that has been preserved as a heritage site. On the way back to the car we walked along the city harbor where a whale watching boat was getting ready to depart. Local teenagers were doing backflips from a short esplanade into the murky water.

Laufás was about a half hour drive north of Akureyri, on the eastern side of Iceland's longest fjord Eyjafjörður. Without any time pressure we were able to enjoy the amazing feeling of driving on an Icelandic coastal road with the fjord on one side of us and the omnipresent snow-capped mountains on the other. We frequently pulled over to take pictures and soak in the feeling that we were the only people in this beautiful part of the planet.

While many of Iceland's surviving turf houses are single bedroom huts, Laufás was a relative mansion with numerous rooms that remained in use until the 1930's. The indoor furnishings were preserved as well down to the cooking implements and the skis and snowshoes used by the occupants. It was hard for us to imagine that people had been living in such different conditions in Iceland just a hundred years previously. As with many places in Iceland the setting of the vicarage in tall grass surrounded by snow-capped mountains was breathtaking. We had a light snack in the museum cafe to tide us over until dinner.

We still had plenty of time to kill so we continued north alongside the fjord to the tiny fishing village of Grenivik. This was the end of the highway and beyond lay the wild and uninhabited Fjörður Peninsula, accessible only by four wheel drive. The village was very modern and well-maintained, but we weren't surprised to see no sign of its human population. From a short concrete dock we could look out over the fjord to the formidable mountains on the opposite side.

Lystigarður Akureyrar has the reputation of being the northernmost botanical garden in the world. We weren't expecting very much given the city's diminutive size but we were quite favorably impressed. There was an extensive network of paths through an extraordinary variety of colorful and interesting plants and trees, as well as several fountains and pools. We saw far more people here than we had anywhere else in Akureyri, sipping drinks at the central cafe or sprawled on the grassy meadow in front of the gazebo. It was probably the most enjoyable experience we had in the city.

Our final approach to the problem of how to fill a day in Akureyri was to move up our dinner reservation an hour to six thirty. This worked out well because we hadn't had a real lunch and were quite hungry, and of course we had absolutely nothing else to do once we finished with the botanical garden. It was a strange situation to be in after the frantic rushing that had consumed every day of our journey up to this point. I didn't regret our decision to spend two nights in Akureyri but I can't say I recommend more than one night in the city for travelers who like to stay busy. Tonight's dinner was special because it was Ian's eighth birthday. The first time we had celebrated his birthday while traveling was five years earlier and the restaurant at Prague had done a wonderful job singing Happy Birthday to him in Czech. I was hopeful we would be able to repeat the experience in Icelandic and perhaps create something of a tradition. I had planned to make a reservation at Strikið. which seemed to be the top restaurant in the city, but for some reason it was completely booked for the whole weekend when I checked a month in advance. Instead I chose the Japanese-Icelandic fusion restaurant Rub23 which was almost equally lauded. It was right next to the art museum on Kaupvangsstræti where we had visited the studio that morning.

Rub23 turned out to be a pretty typical Icelandic restaurant. The Japanese food was rather mundane and the portions were tiny, requiring us to lay out an ungodly amount of cash to avoid leaving hungry. The host got a hunted look in her eye when I asked about the birthday song and told me she would ask and let me know. Later on when I hadn't heard back I asked our waitress if it was going to happen and she told me it was. Eventually she came out all on her own with the little dessert and a candle and sang so meekly we could barely hear her. I felt a little guilty because clearly this wasn't the kind of thing they were used to doing in Iceland but the important thing was that Ian had a huge smile on his face.

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When we left the restaurant there was a large crowd of hopefuls waiting for a table. I felt gratified that our decision to eat earlier meant that another family wouldn't have to be turned away. I was also glad to have the time to beginning packing our bags in the evening as we had to be back on the Ring Road fairly early in the morning. One of our most eagerly anticipated Icelandic adventures lay just ahead.