Woke up not too early at Sundabakki Guesthouse, had a nice breakfast and enjoyed homemade “mama” cakes from the owner of the house who has 5 of her own children and 14 grandchildren, 13 of which are boys so we got extra special nice treatment. Hit the road at 8:30ish so that we could get back to Reykjavík with a chance to see some of the sights in the city.

First stop on way back was at a museum in Borgarnes called the Settlement Center which had two very nice walk through exhibits with audio guides which our band of vikings didn’t make it completely through. We did have a very nice snack break in their coffee shop while the vikings played on the floor.

Next, Karen really wanted to get an Icelandic sweater so she found THE place (called Álafoss) in a little town called Mosfellsbær, which turned out to be a really neat stop. She shopped while walked the vikings around and then we (the vikings) discovered a shop where a guy (Palli Kristjánsson) made and sold all kinds of custom knives, which was really interesting for me and the oldest, not so much the little ones who just wanted to put sheep horns on their head:

I ended up buying a really beautiful Santoku knife with a handle made from the horn of a reinder, the hoof of an Icelandic horse, ebony and marbled padauk. I’m keeping it in a box until we get back home.

We finally found Mommy, who got her sweater and then piled back into the car to drive the rest of the way to Reykjavík. The tunnel Hvalfjörður was closed for re-paving which added an hour or so to the drive but we got back to Reykjavík in the afternoon, checked back into our hotel, drove over to the Perlan to look out over all of Reykjavík:

and also had ice cream. 🙂

Finally, on our last drive we headed out to jump into the tourist trap that is Bláa Lónið (The Blue Lagoon) which is about 40 minutes from downtown but was well worth it for the weary travelers:

and then ended up back in the city for dinner at Íslenski barinn, which was fantastic.

On our last day (Sunday), we had breakfast, returned the rental car and then walked around downtown, checking out Sólfar (Sun Voyager):

visiting the Maritime Museum (free for adults with kids, not highly recommended but nice if you need to waste an hour before you have to get on a plane), getting hot dogs (which are apparently some kind of Icelandic specialty but weren’t any better than what you’d get in Chicago):

and then spending our last bits of cash at a crepe shop which just happened to arrive with a giant pile of ice cream:

All told, a great trip, highly recommended, even in October although I think we got really lucky with the weather. I’d love to go back in July or August and hike around some glaciers and spend some time in the highlands, maybe in a couple years.

Stats:

• Museums : 2
• Hot dogs : 5
• Giant piles of ice cream: 2
• Geocaches: 0!