Akureyri, sweet Akureyri

Great Whitsun weekend !!! I travelled on Friday to Akureyri, the biggest town in N-Iceland. My sister and her family had rented a summer house and me and Hilda were invited to come along together with my mother. We left Reykjavík around 10 in the morning, with about 400 km to go we wanted to make a early start. The trip went well, we stopped at Geitaskarð, a farm owned by my aunt and there we met her and her son. My nephew Ólafur Steinar used the chance to crawl around in the grass, under careful supervision since there was lamb shit everywhere :-) We arrived at the summerhouse around 7, and wow ! It is the greatest summerhouse I've ever been in; expensive tv and video, dishwasher, laundry room, quality hot tub ! And the beds were great ! I slept in a double bed with my mother... only to find out that she snores like a freight train :-) Still, I got plenty of rest :-) We used the weekend to see the sights in Akureyri, and a must was of course The Christmas House ! It really looks like the Ginger bread house from the Hanzel and Gretchen story, but inside it is stuffed with christmas decorations and other christmas-related stuff ! They have christmas music on, a nice fire burning and icelandic hanged lamb hanging from the ceiling. Kinda weird.... but a must see, I guess. The greatest adventures came when we went to the tiny town of Hjalteyri, where we saw a whale swimming just by the shore ! Amazing ! It is the largest whale I've seen, yet it was not one of the biggest species. It was a great experience, we were all thrilled :-) But another great sight was waiting .... a HUGE iceberg had come into Eyjafjörður (the fjord where Akureyri lies), almost a 100 m high ! It was a majestic sight ! We had seen two smaller icebergs on Húnaflói-bay on our way to Akureyri but hello, they were tiny compared to this giant. We stopped in the village Árskógssandur where we looked at it through my binoculars, it was really great. So, the weekend was a great success, we relaxed, ate good food (burned some food due to some inexperience in the gas grill department) and just had a great time ! Yet when I came home Monday evening, I was dead tired after the long drive. But it was worth every second !