Snæfellsnes, Not Snuffleupagus
Wagner Family Vacay — Day 2
The Bee Gees' music filled the small hotel café. How deep is your love, (how deep is your love, how deep is your love) I really mean to learn… ‘cause we’re living in world of fools breaking us down, when they all should let us be…we belong to you and me….
I was sipping hot coffee and enjoying breakfast — eggs, fresh crusty bread, and yogurt with granola waiting for my Wagner fools aka our sons to join Gillian, Eric and me. The café in our hotel was charming — filled with sunlight and hanging plants. After a very full day in Reykjavik, today we would be snaking up the northwest coastline towards “Snæfellsnes” (pronounced Sneye-fells-ness.)
Detail and design are present not only in parks and towns — but infrastructure. I was excited to drive over the Kolgrafavegur bridge, shaped like a Viking sword, the bridge looks unremarkable at eye level, but the aerial view is an impressive homage to their Viking history.
Snæfellsnes sounds like a funny word, but the only funny thing was how many times we wanted to stop along the peninsula for a picture. The scenery is spectacular. Driving along the highway was reminiscent of our 2020 RV trip with the sky looming large over wide-open spaces. The weather was perfect, sunny and clear in the mid-50s. Fields of tall grasses growing alongside the road are home to dozens of horses and sheep. I only had to slam on the brakes once for an unexpected sheep crossing. To their credit, the sheep moved quickly. Fun fact: Sheep in Iceland dramatically outnumber people. No surprise that lamb is one of their signature dishes and Icelandic wool sweaters are sold everywhere. Boasting warm comfort from wet and chill, Gillian & I have been looking at them everywhere we go. The $30,000 IK price tag is the only thing stopping us from buying one in every pattern.
Our first stop was not on the trip itinerary. After seeing a spectacular waterfall from the side of the road, we flipped a U-turn and pulled over. An easy wrought iron path led us towards Bjarnarfoss. (Foss means falls.) Unlike paved paths common in the States, this path was made from an interlocking metal grid allowing small rocks and dirt to fill in the spaces, giving much-needed traction. The path led to a bridge crossing a creek fed by a huge waterfall.
Since we embarked on today’s drive, Matthew has been chirping pearls from the third row. A mix of “Those mountains will not climb themselves, Mom…. That looks hype…. “These mountains are metro booming.…. I am so stoked to do some mountain hikes.” Pulling over was as much for my sanity as it was to scratch Matthew’s hiking itch. We lost him and Topher for an hour to hike to the waterfall. It was really sweet for the brothers to hike together and they took their time with it. When they finally made it down, Matthew announced, That was ‘P’. I still have no idea what that means, but given his expression, I took it as a good thing.
Energized and back on the road, we passed several churches interesting for their size and color. Red, black and white, large and small churches dot the countryside. I learned during my Iceland speed series on the spin bike, (thank you iFit), that despite being the sixth most atheistic country in the world, Iceland is also home to more than 300 churches. Most of the churches are Lutheran and many were built hundreds of years ago. We also passed farms — with dozens of plastic-wrapped haybales sprinkled across the fields ready for collection. For a small, environmentally focused country, it was interesting to drive past the huge bright blue, red, black, and white wrapped bales marked “FEED.”
Hungry from the hike, we went in search of lunch. The town Budir is hailed as the most romantic city in Iceland known as “the Mecca of Icelandic cuisine”. This is incredible marketing. Unless we missed something, the entire “town” consists of a 24-room hotel with a small, pricey restaurant; an adjacent chapel and a cemetery. We decided to gamble and see if we could find another place closer to our first official stop.
You know the old Kenny Rogers song? “Some hands are winners and some hands are losers but if you wanna play the game, you gotta learn to play it right. We gambled and lost. Fast forward an hour. Wagners are at a picnic table eating the “just in case of emergency food” I’d packed from the States. Star Fish “tuna creations.” The shelf-ready lemony mayo tuna salad vacuum sealed in an aluminum foil packet was served on Ritz crackers. We had two choices: plain or “Buffalo tuna” as our starter. The next course was a choice of peanut butter on Ritz crackers or mint chocolate Clif Bars. (I did say they were emergency rations.) It wasn’t as disgusting as it sounds, and it solved the hangry issue. I learned pairing a Spanish red with the mint chocolate Clif Bar was surprisingly tasty.
The Londrangar are massive, jagged iconic basalt rock structures adjacent to a dramatic cliff face plunging into the ocean. Once a volcanic crater, the rock pillars are all that remains after eons of ocean battering. Taking pictures along the lookout, screaming gulls echoed up the cliff face and I felt like I was watching the series finale of Game of Thrones half-expecting dragons to swoop overhead. Eric indulged my need to take goofy pictures and pretended to “fall off” the cliff. The kids saw me pull out the selfie stick and ran away as fast as they could.
From Londrangar we made our way towards Djupalonssandur beach in the Snæfellsjokull National Park. The black sand beach and adjacent Djupalon Lagoon, a stunning reflecting lake, gave us phenomenal peeks at the Snæfellsjokull glacier. The beach was the scene of a tragedy and is today a memorial of sorts. On March 13, 1948, a British trawler Epine GY7 shipwrecked there. 14 seamen drowned and five survived. As parts of the wreck washed ashore, it was decided to leave them as a memorial. Seventy-four years later, the black sand beach is still littered with rusted orange wreckage. It was beautiful and eerie.
If you can climb it, the Wagners will. We passed the afternoon climbing the jagged rocky terrain surrounding the beach. Eric skipped rocks. Gillian collected them and Matthew climbed them. I enjoyed the sunshine noting how fickle the weather was, warm one minute, cold and windy the next. At some point during the climb, Eric took off his wool Nationals’ World Series hat, accidentally leaving at the lagoon. He was bummed to lose the hat, but it felt like a small price to pay for a gorgeous afternoon in nature.
Leaving the Breiðafjörður Bay area, we started driving in search of the Fosshotel. Our mountain climber saw more hikes he had to try. The dormant volcano crater was too interesting to pass up. Topher tagged Matthew in the parking lot and a second later all three of my Wagner boys were running up 420 steps to the top of the crater. Gillian and I reluctantly followed, marching up a slightly different pattern of interlocking metal steps. To be honest, the top was a tiny bit anti-climactic. The surrounding views were spectacular, but we felt a small pang peering into the crater seeing only grass and rock. Further down the road, another mountain calls to Matthew. An indulgent Eric pulled the van into the empty rocky parking lot. I took one look at the massive landscape and said, “No way. I am tired. It’s 7 o’clock and I want to get dinner before it’s too late.” Several minutes later I was following the Wagners up a massive mountain ridge. Rauðhóll is another crater estimated to have last erupted more than 3,000 years ago, now covered in thick moss and lush grass on Snæfellsnes. Our hour-long hike was surprisingly fun. We were all a little punchy. The time and steps passed quickly. There were a few sweaty minutes when we thought we had taken a wrong turn and were immensely relieved when we finally saw our car in the parking lot.
After that last hike, another waterfall, and feeling the squishy moss across a lava field, we finally left the park. Driving towards our hotel, the sun was getting low in the sky. It was almost 9 pm and after our picnic lunch, we all were hoping for a real dinner, not peanut butter on pop tarts. Matthew found a restaurant called Sker (Scare). The name made me nervous, with good reason. The restaurant was fussy and so was their waitstaff. There were no tables available. Gillian pointed across the street and we rushed to a cute pub called Reks. Toph & I ordered a round of hot toddies and Eric ordered the lamb stew to start. A friendly Italian enjoying a smoke struck up a conversation with Topher and Matthew standing on the outside deck. The semester of Italian while Topher was studying in Lugano, Switzerland came in handy and they cobbled together a conversation. Rek’s was our first good Icelandic food experience. Gillian ordered gorgeous chicken over mashed potatoes, the boys all got pulled lamb and my reindeer burger (sorry Rudolph) was fantastic. (For more, see our Google review.) We ended the evening with the man from Milan buying a round of shots at the bar.
By 10:30pm, the sun finally set, sending spectacular colors over the water. We checked into the Fosshotel. The kids' room looked spacious until I saw our room. Apparently, they upgraded us to a master suite including a family room, dining area, and two bathrooms — one with a jacuzzi tub you could swim in. Suddenly I was wishing that we’d skipped a hike for more time to relax in this stunning hotel. It was a short stay. In the morning, we leave the peninsula for West Iceland and “the Golden Circle.”
