Day 39

We spent all day today in Hófsos and it was very relaxing.  We got to sleep in and walked to the Emigration Center, which had several exhibits about Icelandic emigrants.  One exhibit was over 400 photographs of emigrants, since most emigrants had pictures taken of their families once they arrived in America.  I read a lot of stories about emigrants between 1870 and 1910.  I tried to find names of my relatives but I didn’t have all of them memorized and couldn’t find any among the featured photographs.  Other exhibits were about North America, Brazil, and North Dakota.

  After the museum we went to the pool which is on a hill overlooking the coast so you have a great view across the fjord in the pool.

Next we visited some basalt columns on the shore.  

Overall, it was a very enjoyable day with the amount of free time we got since most of this week and has going from one scheduled activity to the next.  It is so nice to be sleeping inside again because it gets quite cold in the middle of the night camping outside in Iceland.  On a different note, tomorrow will be the last full day of activities for the Snorri program.  On Friday morning, everyone else will fly home but I’ll fly to Oslo to go on another European adventure with one of my college friends!  I’m sad the Snorri program is already almost over, the homestay weeks went by really fast.

A random observation I’ve had that frustrates me in Iceland is I’ve noticed that biking along the highways is a popular tourist activity in Iceland.  Personally, I don’t understand why biking in Iceland is so popular and don’t think it is a good idea.  The weather is can change quickly and is often too windy for enjoyable biking where I’ve seen people.  But more importantly, the roads don’t have any shoulders for these cyclists so people are biking in the roads with cars moving very fast around them.  In heavy rain and wind conditions biking like this is very dangerous!