Michael Powell's Blog, page 99
November 2, 2013
Our Favorite Bars and Restaurants in Reykjavík
We spent a sizable chunk of our 91 Icelandic days inside the drinking and eating establishments of Reykjavík. After another long day of museum-visiting or waterfall-ogling, a big beer and dinner cooked by someone else always sounded like a good idea. Here’s a quick list of our favorite places in the city.
Puffin Breast at Þrir Frakkar
Bars
Throughout our first month in Iceland, we were shocked by the sky-high alcohol prices, and drastically scaled back consumption. Of course, our alcoholic natur...
November 1, 2013
Reykjavík Street Art
One of our favorite parts of moving to a new place, is checking out the street art scene. We’ve come to learn that, often, aspects of a city’s personality will be reflected in its graffiti and public art, and so the work we saw in Reykjavík wasn’t a total surprise. Extremely artistic, modern, intelligent and well-coordinated, clearly done with the property holders’ permission. Perhaps a bit too nice for such an anarchic art form, but very Icelandic.
October 31, 2013
Southwest to Skaftafell
On the second-to-last day of our loop around Iceland, we drove along the southeastern coast from the Eastfjords to Hali near Jökulsárlón. Along the way, we saw some amazing mountain scenery and encountered a couple interesting sights near the town of Höfn.
Before 1974 and the completion of the ring road, it took over ten hours to reach Höfn from Reykjavík because you were forced to drive clockwise all the way around the north and east of the country. So for most of its history, Höfn was practi...
October 30, 2013
The Eastfjords
We had a wonderful time in Seyðisfjörður, and the next day continued our clockwise loop around Iceland. The meandering road south took us around the magnificent natural vistas of the Eastfjords, and into a few tranquil coastal villages.
Not many people spend a lot of time in the Eastfjords, a region which boasts none of Iceland’s famous sights. No geysers, geothermal parks or volcanoes, here. But the fjords, carved out thousands of years ago by glaciers retreating into the interior, are breath...
October 28, 2013
Seyðisfjörður
One of the larger towns in the Eastfjords, Seyðisfjörður is best known as the port for weekly ferries arriving from Denmark. We didn’t know much else about it when we decided to spend the night here, but were pleasantly surprised. Seyðisfjörður was one of the more picturesque villages we visited during our entire journey around the country.
Unfortunately, we didn’t see Seyðisfjörður at its best, because of the inclement weather that plagued so much of our trip around Iceland. Heavy fog, interm...
Dettifoss – Europe’s Most Powerful Waterfall
During our three months in Iceland, we saw a lot of waterfalls. Gullfoss, Dynjandi, Hraunfoss, Goðafoss, Seljalandsfoss, Svartifoss, Glymur and many more. But we couldn’t claim to have adequately covered the waterfalls of Iceland, until visiting Dettifoss: the largest and most powerful in Europe.
It was raining when we parked our car and set out across a well-worn trail through the snow. After about ten minutes of hiking, the roar of the waterfall could be heard, but it took another ten minute...
Höfði and Skútustaðir
Mývatn is not really all that big a lake. You could easily drive around its perimeter in about 45 minutes, and so it was a little surprising when our loop turned into an all-day adventure. But we weren’t about to speed past sights as strange and amazing as the Höfði Nature Park, or the psedudocraters of Skútustaðir.
Found on the southeastern corner of Mývatn, the Höfði Nature Park is a private reserve with paths that wind through a forest thick with birch, and end at the lake shore. Along with...
October 25, 2013
The Earth Is Angry: Hverir and Grjótagjá
Like an irritable old codger fed up with the neighbor kids trampling his flower bed, the Earth has posted “No Trespassing” signs all over Iceland. “Nothing says Stay Away better than a hissing pool of mud”, reasons the Earth. “And what’s more, I’ll make it stink of sulfur!” But then what do humans do? We turn it into a tourist attraction! Man, are we annoying.
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The Earth is at its boiling, steaming worst in the Hverir geothermal area. Pools of bubbling mud, strange rock piles like mini-volcanoe...
The Jarðböðin Nature Baths
While we enjoyed our visit to the Blue Lagoon, we did have a few complaints. It was too expensive, too crowded and, although the landscape of black lava was striking, it could have benefited from more variety. Iceland was apparently listening to us and taking notes, because we found all our complaints improved upon at the “Blue Lagoon of the North”: the Jarðböðin Nature Baths.
Situated just a couple miles from Mývatn, the baths at Jarðböðin are the perfect way to end a day packed with activity...
October 24, 2013
The Lavafield of Leirhnjúkur
Not far from the Viti crater on the northeastern side of Mývatn, we encountered the lavafield of Leirhnjúkur, which is part of the Krafla volcanic region. Nearly thirty years after the last eruptions, the ground here is still smoking and hot to the touch.
There’s a five-kilometer path leading through Leirhnjúkur, which took us a couple hours to complete. It should have been faster, but we were slowed significantly by both the snow and the scenery. The trail markers were often completely buried...
