Iceland Day 10: To the West

July 10, 2013

Today is primarily a driving day; we have quite a bit of distance to cover to get to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula north of Reykjavik. We set out promptly from Akureyri; the skies had clouded a bit but it was still good weather by Iceland standards.

Turf-roofed buildings at Glaumbær

Along the way, we stopped at Glaumbær, a folk museum showing some of the early turf-roofed houses and community lifestyle in the 1800s. The houses were surprisingly cozy, and had many facilities for cooking, food storage, and the like. This is probably to be expected with an extended and harsh winter.

The rest of the drive had more traffic than we had seen in East Iceland, but it was definitely still light. The weather degraded, with rain much of the way later in the day. We arrived at our hotel late in the afternoon. The Hótel Búðir, located on the south side of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, is a beautiful hotel constructed on lava fields “in the middle of nowhere”. We have a room high up with an excellent view of the ocean.

Snæfellsnes Glacier

We will have limited time to explore tomorrow, so we went for a drive out to the end of the peninsula. The first (southern) part of this drive was rainy and foggy and we almost turned around. But the northern side of the peninsula was shielded from the rain and was quite nice. We had dinner (delicious fish soup and dessert) at the Gamla Rif café. We had an excellent view of the Snæfellsnes Glacier, and the skies obliged by clearing so we could see it.

The attractive and ubiquitous sheep

This article is part of a series about our recent vacation in Iceland. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.