The next day was as busy as the first day, there’s so much to see on the Peninsula. Down on the coast, there were a few seals out and while they weren’t terribly cooperative, I did manage to get some pictures as they sunned on the rocks.
Dritvik used to be a fishing area where men had to be able to lift rocks of a certain weight just to get a job to go out to sea in the open fishing boats. Still in place are the four rocks that many an Icelandic man tried to pick up. Originally, these rocks would have been about waist high, eliminating the advantage of squatting down to pick up the rock. The rocks weighed between 50 to 340 pounds. If all you could lift was the ‘weakling’ 50 lb rock, you needed to find another job. The minimum lift requirement from hip-high was the 120 pound half-carrier.
Barrett and I won’t be fisherman at Dritvik, that’s for sure! But I could l pick up that weakling rock — kinda sorta!
While there are many volcanic formations throughout Iceland, one of my favorite places to stop is Arnarstapi, at this rock bridge. You have to climb out a bit and it’s not terribly wide but it is a fantastic picture place. There’s a lovely walking trail from the small harbor to the rock bridge and then it continues past more rock formations to a monument for Bardur, the protector of the Snaefellnes Peninsula and then leads you, miraculously, right up to a café for lunch! Yay.
The black church of Budir is a very popular place for photographers. The church is still in use and dates back to 1703. The backdrop of Icelandic mountains is dramatic. And though we saw the glacier from the other side yesterday, it’s prominent from this viewpoint as well.
When I found my ‘fox hole’ I kinda wanted to stay, but just like at the cave, Barrett said, ‘get out’ we have things to do. Okay, okay…… onward we go……
…… to these beautiful basalt columns in Gerðuberg. I’ve seen the basalt columns on the South Coast at Reynisfjara also know as the Black Sand Beach, but this is something entirely different. It is a long cliff of the basalt columns that are beautiful to stand below and very nice to take a step back and view it in its entirety. It was impossible to get a picture of the entire wall of columns.
Our final stop of the day was in the town of Borg. The first settler was Skalla-Grimur Kveld-Ulfsson. His son, Egill who was a warrior and a poet lived here. He’s the Icelander who was the subject of the presentation in Borgarnes. The monument is in honor of his poem Sonatorrek which was written after the death of his two sons. Snorri Sturluson also lived here for a few years between 1202 and 1206 before moving to Reykholt where he met his demise. The church is still a working church and on this particular day, there was a service about to begin so we chose not to linger out of respect.
After spending the two days exploring the West coast, we started the drive back towards Reykjavik. From the distance we could see the smoke from the currently erupting volcano billowing into the sky. We have plans to see that tomorrow!
We returned to our hotel, the Hilton Konsulat in Reykjavik, where we were lucky enough to have reservations at Dill, another Michelin * restaurant. It is another upscale, but authentic Icelandic journey. I had tried to get reservations on prior trips but didn’t succeed, so this was on my ‘to do’ list that I’m happy to accomplish. Check out my ‘Eating Michelin’ link on this blog to read more about our dinner at Dill.
