Today we decided to charge the car and do a large grocery run at a big grocery store about 45 minutes south in Akureyri. Akureyri is the largest city in the north of Iceland and the second biggest city in the entire country. It definitely has a developed port area, with multiple cruise ships docked, restaurants, an art and music scene, shops, etc. (for a population of only 20,000). Yes, that is correct! The second largest city in Iceland has a population of 1/3 to 1/4 of Muncie, IN. I think it has more stuff though because it is all proportional to the total population size of Iceland.
Before we got groceries and charged the car, though, we went to the Akureyri Botanical Gardens, which are the northernmost botanical gardens in the world. It was a cool experience as they had so many beautiful plants and flowers; all were species that can survive the weather in Iceland!
After we explored the botanical gardens, we took a little walk downtown. This city is all about love! Not only do they have heart sculptures to pose in, but the red light in every stop light in Akureyri is shaped like a heart. I really liked this feature. We also made a quick visit to Akreyrikirka, a church designed by the same person who designed Hallgrimskirka in Reykjavik (can you tell?!? haha). We then decided to have a fun pre-birthday meal for Ezra (and all of us) at an all-you-can-eat, conveyor belt sushi place in town. And yes, Akureyri, much to our surprise, has one of those! It was fun to eat out and fun to watch what was coming by near our table. Ezra and Naomi, of course, liked snatching the plates. This one didn’t even have a visible conveyor belt! Each plate was on a small platform that was apparently attached via magnet to a magnetized conveyor belt below the visible counter. It looked like the platforms were just floating around the counters. 🙂 One of the crazy things about it is, especially with the incredibly high prices of most everything in Iceland (certainly including eating at restaurants), this wasn’t any more expensive than it would have been in the US. In fact, the price for kids under 12 was only $15 per person! Don’t they know my kids eat sushi like a hungry sumo wrestler?!?
After lunch, grocery shopping, and car charging (during grocery shopping). we went back to Olfsfjordur as we were all excited to have another afternoon/early evening at the local pool! This meant that we got another opportunity to go through the Einbried Gong as well…and we did get a video! Honestly, it runs so smoothly.
A few other notes from our recent drives in Iceland:
In many areas, you see farms with evenly stacked hay bails. The bails are always shrink wrapped in plastic in order to protect them to feed the horses through the Icelandic winter. They are usually wrapped either white, black, or green…but they told us that they sometimes wrap them pink for breast-cancer awareness. Pink for breast cancer awareness happens in the US as well, just not on the hay bails…
About 5-10 times during ours drives through Iceland, we will turn a corner or come over a bluff and all of a sudden see dozens of white swans in the water. It has happened in different geographic areas of Iceland and we are surprised each time we see them. They are beautiful though!
We have also frequently seen these rings in the water. We looked it up and they are apparently salmon farms.
Finally, we think painted stone art must be a bit of a thing in Iceland. You may remember the photo of the stones painted like South Park characters on a building on Heimaey Island. Well, our neighbor in Olfasfjordur had quite the similar collection!
See you on the next mountain!
July 16, 2025 – Total Steps 9,158 (Little Elevation)
Such gorgeous flowers at the botanical garden!