Enjablog

The next morning, we got up bright and early to get in on the breakfast buffet. What we had not prepared for was the typical Icelandic breakfast:

- corn flakes
- meusli
- skyr (a yogurt-like product that I later found out was Iceland’s national cheese)
- sliced hard-boiled eggs
- platter of sliced sandwich meats and cheese
- breads
- crackers, salty and sweet (like animal crackers, but in round and rectangular forms)

I think Ian summed up best what we were all thinking, “All I wanted was a plate of scrambled eggs the size of my head!” Seems the entire country is unfamiliar with scrambled eggs. We didn’t find any the whole trip.

After breakfast, we explored the Snæfellsjökull area. There were a few easy trails nearby with interesting scenery, so we went to see some volcanic craters and waterfalls.

Around noon, it was time to hit the road for Akureyri. We decided it would be prudent to find a grocery store for some emergency rations and possibly a restaurant for lunch before we got too far away from civilization, so we made a stop in Olafsvik — the largest town on that peninsula.

Olafsvik was a really cute town. We went a little overboard at the grocery store, but we all had our hungry memories of the night before fresh in our minds. Ian and Sune searched for high-protein snacks, and not being able to find any jerky, settled on some dried fish. I’ve had chinese dried fish and it looked very similar, so I vouched for its edibility. (To be continued…)

We had lunch at Olafsvik Hotel, which had somewhat small portions, but really good food. Ian had their monk fish and even I thought it was delicious! Though, I did find a lot of fish entrees that I enjoyed throughout Iceland; maybe I just haven’t been trying the right kinds of fish at home.

From there, we drove west across 2/3 of the country and made it to Akureyri in time to pick up Ian’s bag from the airport before they closed.  We even made it to Hotel Edda with a half hour to spare before their dinner buffet ended.  Down side: no internet! It was broken and they had no idea when it would be fixed.

So, this was our first experience with Icelandic dinner:

- a few typical salad options, breads, rolls, crackers
- 3 kinds of pickled herring
- reindeer pate
- tuna pate
- smoked salmon
- salted cod
- smoked whale
- smoked puffin
- roast beef
- ham
- roasted potatoes
- french fries

I tried a little of everything except the smoked puffin.  I accidentally got smoked whale twice, which wasn’t particularly noteworthy.  Everyone else thought the puffin was very strong, but mixed response as to whether it was good. I didn’t much like the reindeer pate.  It had an odd texture to it.  The pickled herring was pretty good, though very strong. It’s traditionally a breakfast food, but I definitely would not eat it for breakfast. I think it’d make a reasonable side to a lunch, like a pickle would. The salted cod was alright, but I didn’t know what it was and was really unprepared for how salty it was. And I <3 potatoes.

After dinner, we settled in for the evening. Ian and I both ended up staying up way later than we thought because we missed the sunset and sunrise… and thought it was still evening.  At that latitude this time of year, there’s about an hour between sunrise and set, which means dusk and dawn overlap and it doesn’t actually get dark. We started to learn not to use the sun as a guage of time after a while.