Hi internet! I hope you're having a good week. This post is part of a 3-part series covering my ten-day vacation in Iceland. The first post covered nature in Iceland; I recommend you check it out if you haven't read it. This post will focus on the towns and villages we stopped by.
Reyjavik
We spent our first day at Reyjavik, Iceland's capital. Reyjavik and its suburbs hold the majority of Iceland's population. It's a charming, extremely touristy city with good food and a small downtown.
There is a lot of pride iconography in Reyjavik, and in many other towns. Here is a gay street with the famous Hallgrimskirkja church in the background.
We went up Hallgrimskirkja, where you can get beautiful 360-degree views of the city.
Borgarnes
Once we left Reyjavik, we started our road trip in earnest and stopped by Borgarnes, which is slightly to the north of Reyjavik. The town has a really good museum called the Settlement Center, which has an exhibit about the settlement of Iceland. The art there was really cool, with lots of wooden-carved statues.
Glaumbær
After a few hours of driving northwest, we stopped by the open-air Glaumbær Museum, which has turf farmhouses you can step inside to see a replication of 18th- and 19th century Icelandic agricultural life. The farmhouses are roofed with turf, and are slightly below ground level. Various homes are connected through a hallway. It's giving hobbit hole a little bit.
Siglufjörður
The next day, we drove to the Tröllaskagi peninsula and spent some time in Siglufjörður, a port town that used to have a booming herring processing industry. Herring used to be one of Iceland's main exports, but herring stocks crashed and the town shrunk as a result. The town has a Herring Museum that goes through the history of the town and the herring industry.
Akureyri
We then drove to Akureyri, the second largest city in Iceland and the defacto capital of northern Iceland. It's a sleepy spread-out town with a very beautiful botanical garden.
Eastfjords: Seydisfjordur and Djupivogur
After Akureyri, we spent a day in the Myvatn area and then headed toward the Eastfjords on the eastern coast of Iceland. We had to go up and down a large mountain to get to Seydisfjordur, a beautiful, Ghibli-esque town right on the fjords. A large percentage of the residents are artists.
Here is a gay street in this remote town.
After more than 5 hours of driving that day, we spent the night at an Eastfjords town called Djupivogur.
And..back to Reyjavik
The rest of the road trip westward through South Iceland was very nature-focused, eventually leading us back to Reyjavik on the western coast.
I hope you enjoyed this little snapshot of towns in Iceland. Please stay tuned for a food-focused Iceland blog post. After that, it will be back to our usual programming.
Best,
Tuck
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