Day 10: Heimaey is the largest and only inhabited of the Westman Islands, found--confusingly--on Iceland's south coast. This dramatic, beautiful island boasts a population of a couple thousand people and several million puffins. Sometimes. They're seasonal residents.
If you just arrived here without any prior knowledge of the history of the island you'd be like, "Those rocks are pretty. This is a small but nice town"without realizing the absolute tenacity and resilience of the people who live here.
You may, for example look at this little building and think it's small and oddly placed and what is it used for? Then you'd forget about and carry on. It may not occur to you that it is the surviving facade of what was once someone's home.
Looking just behind that little remaining building tells a bigger story.
You may also see stairs leading up this hillside and think "what a lovely place to walk!" Without realizing this hillside is less than 50 years old.
The hill, covered with lupins with wide paths to walk on, seems like a really pleasant sort of park. If you didn't do some research ahead of time, you may not realize that these paths actually mark where streets once ran several feet below your feet.
You may even walk right by this unassuming post not realizing that it marks the height of the ash that buried this spot between January and June of 1973.
This lovely church with it's surrounding cemetery doesn't stand out as anything but picturesque if you were unaware that it was all dug out by hand to avoid damaging the tombstones.
If you missed all that but managed to make your way through town to the Eldheimar museum, you may be absolutely shocked to see a house that has been recovered from the silica and ash after being buried for 40 years.
In 1973, over 400 homes were destroyed and buried when Eldfell volcano eruption began. Remarkably, not a single life was lost to the volcano, despite how destructive it was. However, many families were displaced. Many left the island and never returned. But the the town and it's people carry on living nextdoor to the volcano, with daily reminders of what it can do.
Eldfell might be one of the most fascinating things about Vestmannaeyjar, but that is not all there is to see! Indeed, there is the tenants of a Danish fort from many hundreds of years ago, a replica of one of Norway's oldest churches, and an aquarium that specializes in the rescue and rehabilitation of seabirds (especially puffins).
The most overlooked thing that brought me so much joy was this statue of Asi i Bae. The bench next to him is equipt with a button that, when pressed, plays music. Some friendly Icelanders explained to me that he was a song writer, mostly writing song about fishing, the sea...you know, sea shanties! This was the happiest accidental discovery of the day.
The view from the back of the ferry as we headed back to the mainland were quite beautiful.
Paul and Laszlo will tell you that this dog was their favorite part of Iceland.
Day 11: we headed further along our roadtrip, stopping off at Skogafoss. This waterfall has stairs that allow you to climb to the top and see the waterfall from above. A formidable 500+ steps, but we did it!
Afterwards we visited the nearby Skogar museum. This includes an open air portion with traditional homes and farm buildings, fully furnished, to give a glimpse into farm life in days of yore.
It also included a folk museum, and a communication and transportation museum. While the kids liked the outdoor area best, I would have liked to spend more time in the other areas.
They fit into my favorite type of museum: eclectic collections of odd things. In this case, bug collections, butter churns, saddles, fishing tools, black smith puzzles, radios, snow machines, farm trucks, and so many spinning wheels, Sleeping Beauty's parents would have had a melt down.
From there we hopped in the car for the big drive up to the Skaftafell glacier. A short, easy hike got us pretty close to the glacier, but don't let the smooth, flat path fool you. If you ask my kids this was soooo long and spoon hard and they couldn't possibly do the whole thing, please carry me??
We made it to our new home for a night, and we got welcomed warmly with some Icelandic wedding cake and a very friendly host. We played some games in the kitchen area before bedtime.
In the morning our kids ran around trying to drive everyone crazy, and the hosts stayed nice so I guess they are just wonderful humans!
We headed to Jokulsarlon, the famed glacier lagoon and the nearby, and aptly named, diamond beach.
Ice that breaks off from the glacier floats through the lagoon, through a shallow channel, and out to sea where it washes up on shore to sparkle and slowly melt.
The kids loved this beach. Laszlo especially just wanted to break apart the ice with rocks and could have spent hours doing so.
The lagoon itself is beautiful, and what better way to see it than on a boat?
When we got off the boat Laszlo declared it "the best boat ride ever." I am not bringing it up with him again because It worried he'll have changed his mind on that and I'd rather go on remembering how much he loved it at the time.
Jokulsarlon is very big, which means the actual glacier is quite far away. To see a glacier a little closer (and to eat lunch), we stopped at Fjallsarlon. This glacier lagoon is much smaller, so the glacier is much closer.
From there we started our long drive back to our last stay near the airport. We made a couple stops to stretch our legs, one of them was the ever photogenic Fjadrargljufur. A twisty river canyon made famous by the Biebs.
We could see the area (now roped off) where people totally wrecked the fragile moss so they could get a picture that looks just like the one they saw on Instagram... don't be like Justin Bieber. Stay on marked trails, away from cliff edges, and don't trample the flora.
Day 12: We had to be near Reykjavik to get our covid tests for return to the US, so we did some minor shopping, got packed up as much as we could, and had a stellar plan...that mostly fell apart due to rain, wind, and road closures. I've been pretty happy with just about everything we did each day of this trip. This day, I would do differently if I could get a do over. We'd just go hang out at a pool for the bulk of the day. Instead we killed a lot of time in the car to stay out of the rain.
The boys refused to get out and see the one thing we got to see, which was the Kerid crater, and it was very wet and cold so I don't blame them.
Still, it was gorgeous, I wouldn't trade seeing it for dry legs all the rest of the day. Trade off worth it!
At least the day finished strong! We had our last Icelandic supper at Ingolfskalli. This is a farm to table restaurant, but Viking themed. They built the traditional long house and hand crafted everything inside of it. Not only did we eat some tasty foods, we also tried some hakarl, a traditional hardship food. What is it, you ask? It's fermented shark meat. My assessment: tastes fine till the ammonia hits you right behind the eyes. Interesting experience, not as bad as everyone says.
Next thing you know, we're frantically rushing drowsy kids to the car early in the morning so we can catch our flight home. We're lucky to have gotten so much pleasant weather, we're lucky to have had our trip go so smoothly, we're lucky to be traveling at all.
Our first time traveler, Arthur, really takes the MVT (most valuable traveler) award for sleeping on the planes, chilling in the car, and generally being fine with wherever we went and whatever we did.
I wouldn't recommend transatlantic flights with A baby, but maybe with THIS baby it would be okay.
May your summer and your travels, whether across the sea or across the street, be as lovely as ours. Goða Ferð!
