Iceland, Day 3 (Olafsvik and Snaefellsnes Peninsula)

Do you know what we looked like watching for the Northern Lights last night??

Yup that was the picture I got of us sitting in a dark car beside the road looking up, hoping to get a glimpse, even though it was cloudy cloudy. Oh well.

Hope this doesn't turn out to be like our elusive moose story:(

So last night we stayed in another Airbnb and there were two other couples there. One couple was from Italy, and we think the other couple was German. That's an advantage of staying in a rented room, you get to share the kitchen and get to know other people pretty easily. 

Our goal today was to head west to the Snaefellsjokull National Park and see rock formations, a light house and supposedly there is a glacier there too, but you couldn't prove it by me. All we saw today was fog:

Maybe there is a glacier in there somewhere??

We were hoping to see the Snaefellsjokull Stratovolcano and its glacier in the National Park. This is the oldest National Park in Iceland and this mountain was the setting for Jules Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth. And even though it hasn't erupted since about 200 AD, it is still considered to be an active volcano.

We did, however, get to see the Saxholl volcanic crater:

Got several different views of a pretty awesome lava formation called Londrangar,

And got a pretty good view of some crazy people walking over a rope to get the PERFECT shot.

You can see in the top picture the rope you are not supposed to cross.  Going to a cliff's edge to get the "perfect" picture is not a good idea on a perfect day, much less on a day like today when wind gusts at times made it hard to stand.

The little town of Olafsvik (pop. approximately 1,000) is not without its beauty. It has its own waterfall, Baejarfoss.

Here's a water view from our place.

And there's a boat displayed on the side of the road as we came into town:

Olafsvik is the westernmost settlement of its size in Europe and was at one point one of the largest trading ports in Iceland. Surprisingly (not), a lot of the economy is based on fishing.

Some of you have mentioned to me that you have heard the food here is very expensive, and I will say that is a YES. I mentioned on my FB that one bowl of seafood soup with two small pieces of bread and a coffee or tea was about $17 USD. Today we shared a meal of lamb, mashed potatoes (sweet and white), and three half pieces of about six inch asparagus., and it was a little over $50, and this is at lunchtime.

While traveling here, what has been useful to us is that if we see a city that has "vik" on the end of it, we know that it is on a bay or inlet; i.e., Reykjavik (largest city in Iceland) Keflavik (where airport is located), or Olafsvik. If you see a name of something that has "foss" on the end of it, you know that is a waterfall; i.e., Gulfoss or Baejarfoss.  

Tonight, we are in a different Airbnb in Olafsvik sharing the common areas, kitchen, den, and bathrooms, with a couple of ladies from Holland. When they told us they are from Holland, we got excited and told them we are traveling to Amsterdam when we leave Iceland. We then had our doubts about Amsterdam being in Holland, because we have been saying it is in The Netherlands. It was explained to us that Amsterdam is in Holland, and that the entire area is the Netherlands. We're still confused. One of the ladies talked about how pretty Amsterdam is with all the old buildings and "kennels".  We thought we were going to see the hidden treasure of the Amsterdam kennels since we had not read anything about it. To our disappointment, it was just miscommunication and she was calling the canals kennels, so no hidden treasure awaits us.