Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
GoneExploring
Oh what a beautiful morning! The sun is shining and it looks like it's going to hang around for a while. Our itinerary is a bit vague today but we know we won't be disappointed. We travel through the valley of Seyðisfjörður, the longest fjord in Iceland, heading for the snow capped mountain of Dyrfjöll in the distance. The mountain road is narrow and precarious in places but it takes us down into a lovely little fishing village called Bakkagerði with about 100 inhabitants. The town derives its name from the Alfaborg (Elf Rock). The locals believe that the queen of the elves lives in the Alfaborg. We explore the village, including a cute turf house badly in need of a haircut! We then drive to the harbour and are very excited to see a colony of puffins. We drive up and over the Fjarðará mounta in road, which is the highest in Iceland, and along the Njardvik Screes which was once considered extremely dangerous due to landslides and avalanches down the sheer cliff drops to the sea. This brings us to the town of Seyðisfjörður 60;which shares its name with the longest fjord. Seyðisfjörðu r is surrounded on all sides by mountains with most prominent Mt. Bjólfur to the West and Strandartindur to the East. Prohibition in Iceland went into effect in 1915 and lasted, to some extent, until 1 March 1989 (since celebrated as “Beer Day”) The first Icelandic beer sold in1989 in Iceland, was Gull beer and now Gull has been voted the best standard lager in the world on the world beer awards.Today Iceland has 2 big breweries and many micro-breweries that are constantly trying to make new beers for the growing population of beer enthusiast in Iceland. Eyþór Þórisson, a restaurant owner of Kaffi Lara, in Seyðisfjörður, begun brewing A beer made to his own recipe in the mid-2000s which he named after the sunken tanker, El Grillo. The front label of the bottle features a picture of the sinking ship while the back side label tells the story of the sinking of the tanker. Café Lara El Grillo Bar is named after Lara, a local legend that lived in the house for decades. Before the bar came in to existence the house was simply known by the name: Laras House. Lara was a very resourceful and imaginative woman and stories of her are popular around the kitchen tables of locals. Among the things she came up with over the years to earn a living was cooking fish and chips for the British fishermen, staging seance meetings and selling lottery tickets. Sitting in the beautiful sunshine, with cake and a beer, one could almost imagine living here. On the way back up the road we stop to take photographs of some of the 25 waterfalls of the river Fjarðará before visiting the Seyðisfjörður 160;lakeshore.
- comments