Monday Ice: Kleinur

Have you been to Iceland, returned home and now missing the icelandic doughnut treat 'kleinur' with your morning coffee....well miss no more...here is the recipe to make your own.

Kleinur from Sakarias Ingolfsson on Vimeo.

A Sunny day and Geocaching

You can definitely feel that summer is on its way, the days are ever so much longer, we have daylight dusk to dawn from around 6.30am-8.30pm and it increases about 7 mins each day.  I hear the squeals and laughter of children playing outdoors till dark and there is movement in and around the town much earlier on the weekend now.  During winter I could go for a walk on a Sat or Sun at 11 am and not see a person or car pass by.

 

 Views across from the graveyard

 on a beautiful bright,

 sunny Saturday morning.

Saturday was such a glorious sunny day, no gloves, hat, scarf or thermals required...I felt so light.   To make most of the sunshine Patricia, Bjarki and I spent the afternoon geocaching.

It even got to a warm 16°.  I know family and friends in Australia will think 16° is cold but I have certainly become acclimatised and now feel 16° is pretty dam warm.

We revisited a cache location that we had unsuccessfully tried a few weeks back when there was still much snow around.

 

 The cache is located 3/4 of the way up this hill and it is steeper than it looks...100m elevation.

Patricia taking a photo

 
  of the Bóla waterfalls.

the last time we were here some of the waterfalls were frozen solid.

 When you turn around the view is amazing and very different from when we were here before.

 

Bjarki having a little recovery session

before making the trek back down to the car.

The next cache was much easier to get and took us no time at all

 it was just a little beyond the bridge to the right,

access was via this old road which is no longer used much...except maybe by farmers and geocachers.

And across the river another isolated house that the hermit in me would love to live in.

 A quaint little church and graveyard, where an ancestor of Bjarki's was a priest....so he is considering hiding a cache close by...I've forgotten where this is exactly.

We were going to try and visit the little island of Hrisey as there is a cache there but when we arrived at the port we had just missed the ferry and there was not another for two hours...so this trip will be made another day. We then drove to Dalvik...when you are out with a couple of food scientists lunch cannot be missed, so we stopped at the kaffi hús situated in the cultural/library building in Dalvik.  After lunch we had a quick look around the building and admired an exhibition of screen prints by Erró and a small antique box exhibition...I coveted quite a few of those!  There was also a shelf of old books for sale at 100 kronas (abt 75c AUS) and the very first book Bjarki pulled out had been translated from English to Icelandic by his great grandfather in 1909...what a great find!  I purchased 3 simply for the decorative covers.

 Whilst the bindings are very librarish, they are good examples for workshops plus the top one has a hand made decorative paper cover perhaps of ink marbelling...not quite sure.  

Across the road from the library was this place...the word Pub is not one I expected to see in Iceland.

On the drive I spotted this...a lighthouse on a small bit of land/rock in the middle of a fjord.

 To get to the next cache we had to drive through 3 tunnels

that pass through the mountains...in this pic above you can just see a little black rectangle, which is the entrance/exit of one.

 The scenery which ever way you look, is always spectacular.

  On the way to the next cache we stopped and admired a pretty little town called Ólafsfjörður

Of course as we moved further north it is cooler and the snow still heavy in parts.

The last cache we were doing for the day was in Siglufjörður, it was a multi cache consisting of 3 locations and we found them all quite quickly.  At the beginning of the day Bjarki had the sense to book our favourite restaurant Hannes Boy Café as we have turned up previously and it's been totally booked out. I have raved about the place before and so we rounded off a great day with a superb meal.

Carpaccio

 Seafood Bisque

Saltfish

 lambfillet

 Chocolate mousse

warm chocolate cake

view of Siglufjörður from the restaurant window

So eventually we headed for home, the map below will give you some idea of our route for the day.

We left Sauðárkrókur on Hway 75, down to Varmahlið and across to Hway 1 and then on to Hway 82, here you can see Dalvik (a red dot) and where we didn't go Hrísey (yellow dot).  Then through to Olafsfjörður and Siglufjörður and the route home took us pass Hofsós.  All in all a fabulous day with a fabulous couple.

Geocaching again!

After putting the second coat of paint on the studio walls on Saturday I went out for the rest of the day with Bjarki and Patricia geocaching.  We headed towards Akureyri and outlying areas and managed to find 5 well 4 for me as I had already previously found one.  Caches are few and far between each other in Iceland, at the moment there are only 272 in the whole country.  I just added  2 in Sauðárkrókur and will hide more next summer...the number will grow as time goes on.
When we left Sauðárkrókur the day was fine and sunny but rain started as we closed in on Akureyri and we got a little damp...but nothing we can't handle.   It doesn't rain heavy here...it is always just a drizzle or a misty type of dampness...I have yet to experience any sort of downpour or what I call really fat rain.  And I have never even seen an umbrella used here or even any for sale! 

One of the pretty spots we visited was the botanical garden....

 I think a few weeks ago it would have been stunning and I must go back next year in the height of summer to experience it.

 Here is Bjarki casually retrieving a cache!

When you go out with a couple of food scientists geocaching, the day pretty much goes like this....a geocache or two...then food....a geocache or two then food...a geocache or two then food.

One of the food stops was at the cultural centre where Bjarki and Patricia had lunch, I had already eaten before we left home so only had coffee and cake but the cake was very disappointing so to make it up to me Patricia and Bjarki took me to a farm that makes their own icecream.

Unfortunately I don't have photos but we tasted a fair few between us. There were unusual flavours to choose from, herbal ones, liquorice and even beer flavour and it really tasted like beer...it was quite bizarre but yummy! We bought a few tubs to take home with us...unfortunately no beer ones were left...a popular flavour it seems.

 This pic was on the way to the icecream farm which I took from the car as we passed.  A funny little green painted house...perhaps for the little people.  Behind it you can just make out a little turf building as well.  You see the remains of these often as you travel around as once these were the main dwellings of the population especially in rural areas.  I think they are heritage protected now and can't be bulldozed.

 Another cache spot was near this turf farmhouse in Laufás which is now a museum and very similar to Glaumbær.  The oldest part of the farm was built in 1840 and extended during the years 1866-1870.  Between 20 and 30 people lived at Laufás as many farmhands were needed to work the farm, haymaking, fishing in the river and collecting eiderdown along the coastline.

 

Unfortunately it had just closed for the day when we arrived...as it was already after 6pm

but I did manage to take a couple of pics through the windows.

Look closely and check out the pattern on the saddle...bara fallegur (just beautiful)

The church

 the view across the farm

The view from the other side of Akureyri.

The next food stop was to be for dinner and Patricia and Bjarki were eager to go back to the restaurant that we weren't able to get into before in Siglufjörður...it was only just over an hours drive away and so we booked for 8pm.  To get to this town we travelled through 4 tunnels that are excavated through mountains and they go for many kilometres. 

To eat at Hannes Boy Café was well worth the drive to this northern little town, which is 66°north...you must book...as it is very popular and deservedly so...the food was superb.

The decor whilst sounds tacky....furniture made from tequila barrels...somehow it wasn't...there was a restrainedness to it and it worked very well without being overdone.

I loved the chandeliers they looked like different size candles but were electric lights.

 

 
Upstairs there is a social drinking area and these seats from tequila barrels are very comfortable.

 
This gentleman casually people watches as he surveys the restaurant from the balcony above.

 and to top it off the bathroom had real towels to dry your hands (I was so impressed)

It gets dark by about 9pm now and this is around 10.30 when we left the restaurant.

I got home around midnight and still had to take Perla out for a walk...she so missed me!

The day/night thing seems quite normal at the moment...I go to bed when it is dark and I wake up when it is light.