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Published: October 9th 2016
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We never met the host of our Airbnb room in Akureyri – she always seemed to be out when we were in, and vice versa. It turned out to be in a quiet residential neighbourhood yet only a short walk from the town centre. Last night on late arrival we had very few options for eating, but there were plenty of restaurants to choose from when we walked around in the morning. The first thing that impressed Helen was that if your breakfast included smoked salmon, that meant a whacking great slab of the stuff rather than a tissue-thin, translucent slice.
Thus fortified, we set out on a day trip that included a major waterfall, Dettifoss (“Europe’s most powerful”, which I assume is a measure either of volume per second times height of drop, or else of tourism publicist’s chutzpah). But it was big and loud. En route were: Godafoss, a pretty major waterfall in its own right; a site where you could get very close to a lot of steam coming out of the ground; and a rather beautiful lake, Myvatn, which we almost circumnavigated by passing it to the souh on the way out and to the north
on the way back.
Dinner that night was at a – the – fish restaurant, opposite the sea, which served in traditional local styles as well as an English-style battered option. Both were magnificent. Not usually a big fan of baked fish, I was impressed with Helen’s dish, and the battered and fried option (yep) was also brilliant. We were able to report all this back to Joely, a Swiss woman in the house who was looking for good fish eating. In her late thirties, she has just chucked in a fabulously well-paid corporate job (a very not-Swiss thing to do) to travel for a long time. Her favourite place is the Faroe Islands – she met a couple from there who said, “If you ever come there, look us up.” She did, and they put her up for eight days and showed her the whole place.
Akureyri has a superb bookshop (coffee and comfy chairs), at which on the morning we left I spotted the complete works of Vilborg Dagbjartsdottir. Nearly all in Icelandic, though, so we gave it a miss. The trip to Hvammstangi included stops for preserved turf-roofed farmhouses, random animals on the road, and
Hvitserkur, a really big basalt rock in the shape of a grazing dinosaur. This last attraction took us along the most potholey of all the potholey roads we navigated during our stay. It left the hire car with a couple of rattles that weren’t there before and which we hope will not upset the hire company too much.
Our hosts that night, Oddny Helga and Savaer, and their children and animals, were delightful, their rustic waterfront house charming, and our stay was as good a B&B experience as we have ever had. (The fact that both were teachers and that Oddny was a dedicated knitter set things off on the right foot.) For dinner we walked down to a restaurant on the shore in a magical setting. Wine, as always, was simply not an economic option, but the beers, as always, were superb.
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