Days 33-34

Thursday I worked at the folk museum until the early afternoon then I caught a bus to Reykjavik to meet up with the Snorri group.  The folk museum staff threw me a small goodbye party where we all had cake and they gave me book full of photos of Akranes.  It was so nice of them!  Sigga brought me some more Icelandic treats to send me off with including chocolate, Appelsin (Iceland’s orange soda), and a bag of Icelandic chips.  Later the painters stopped by and chatted with Sigga and me while having some cake.  They all said a sweet goodbye.  

Then I caught a bus to the University of Iceland in Reykjavik where the hostel was located that the Snorri group was staying at for the night.  We all met up around 6 pm and dropped off our clothes that we wouldn’t need during our weeklong tour of west Iceland at Ásta’s (the program coordinator) office.  Then we all walked to a nice dinner on the harbor in downtown Reykjavik.  We ate a delicious fish stew that had a slight curry taste then got ice cream together near the maritime museum. 

For the rest of the night, most of the Snorris went out to a bar in downtown located in a house that Ásta used to live in!  We spent the night talking about our homestay experiences.

On Friday we were scheduled to leave at 9 am for the tour but didn’t end up departing our hostel until 10 am due to a food shopping delay.  Then we starting the drive north.  Our first stop was the War and Peace museum which is a person’s private collections of artifacts relating World War II in Iceland.  I learned that the Allies had naval stations in Hvalfjörður, Iceland during the war.  Germany and Russia also had a presence in Iceland with planes and spies during the war but they didn’t have stations.  Most of the military base buildings were demolished after the war ended so few remains of the bases can be seen today.

Next we stopped to eat lunch at a picnic table on the side of the road.  We made our own sandwiches with food that Ásta had brought then we hopped back on the bus.  The next three stops: Snorralaug, Hraunfossar/Barnafoss, and Húsafell were all places I had visited with Þorunn on Tuesday.  At Húsafell we went to the pool which had several heated pools and a fun slide most of us tried out!  Next, we drove to a goat farm where one of the Snorri participant’s host families worked.  It was the only farm that is primarily goats in Iceland with around 220 goats.  I got to hold baby goats that were so cute!  And we saw kittens and chickens at the farm.  Then we tried the farm’s products such as dandelion and rhubarb jams and different flavors of goat cheese that were all delicious.  

After the farm we drove for about an hour and a half to a community center in Snæfellsness where we ate dinner and are staying the night.