Iceland Day 13

Textile Museum, Bogarnes, last night in Iceland, summary

Our penultimate day in Iceland and we had to make our way back to Reykjavik for our return flight the next day.   It would be a day of driving with time for a couple of brief stops.  First, a visit to the Textile Museum in the town of Blonduos.  

We stopped in Bogarnes for lunch - and we decided not to go with the guidebook recommendations, which were full due to the busloads of tourists arriving for their noontime meal.  We found a lovely cafe on the water.  It was cozy and the food delicious.  

cafe

 We returned to the Hotel Fron in Reykjavik and they gave us a bigger, nicer room.  For our final night in Iceland , we returned to the restaurant where we had our first dinner in Reykjavik.  We enjoyed a couple of Icelandic beers which were quite yummy! 

As usual, I was sad to be leaving but looking forward to going home.  Iceland was a wonderful place where one magnificient view would change to another magnificient view.  It is a place where one couldn't take a bad photograph, where the food  and beer were delicious, the people were nice, and getting around in a car was extremely easy.  Some details about the trip:

We booked our trip through Nordic Visitor which provided us with a complete 2 week itinerary with suggestions on where to stop although I found it to be a bit lacking, a car, all the guesthouse bookings (which included breakfast), GPS navigation, a cell phone, guidebooks, maps, and transportation to and from the airport.  It was nice not to have to think too much and we had our trusty Frommer's to help with planning our daily activities.  Most of the accomodations were good with the exception of one which was already mentioned in a blog post. The food was great with the highlights being lamb, cod, langostine, new potatoes, and soups.   While there wasn't much fresh local produce, we had fresh vegetables for all our meals including breakfast - most likely from continental Europe.  The coffee was delicious, plentiful, and occasionally free at some of the attractions.  The tea (which I mostly drink) was of high quality and prepared well.  Tea is something that most places including in San Francisco do not pay attention to.  

While our tour included transportation to the airport, it was a chaotic and silly experience where we had to wait outside (in the rain) for a van to pick us up to bring us to the bus station, which was about 5 blocks away.  We then had to wait in another line at the bus station to pick up our vouchers for the bus ride to the airport.  It wasn't clear what and where we had to go so it was unfortunate that our last day in Iceland was marred by this experience.  It would have been better if they told us we had a choice of waiting for the van or to walk the 5 blocks to the station to pick up our vouchers.  It all worked out in the end.

Later posts will be about how Iceland  inspired me and what I plan on doing next in the studio.