The fifth most populous city at ~19,000, situated midway on the craggy North coast of Iceland. Deep in a fjord it’s protected from the worst of the weather and is typically a little milder than neighboring areas – certainly it was glorious the day we visited.

Very early in the morning – about 06:30am when we were in the gym – ship power went out, and with it water and all other services. My rower is me powered, so I just kept plodding along 🙂

By the time I got back to the cabin power was on/off, and we weren’t quite sure what to do for the best as we needed to shower and get ready for breakfast.

By about 08:00 things had stabilized and it became apparent that this would be a tender port, rather than alongside as planned – we’d dropped anchor when we lost power and lost too much time for it to make sense to tie up.

Our Panoramic Akureyri excursion wasn’t until 1:00pm, so we decided to go ashore and wander about a bit on our own – it being another stunning day.

This would be our first tender experience on Viking, and boy do they make it easy. No side ladder or gangway here, the tender comes up tight alongside a hatch and you simply walk across. Note that those with Viking excursions tender first, and then it’s opened for general access.

Once ashore we started out towards the tourist information center – we would later learn that this is home to just about the only public bathroom in Akureyri. Toilet facilities across Iceland just don’t seem to be a priority. We walked a considerable distance trying to find a toilet, not knowing that we were passing just about the only one in town – the other is at the botanical gardens.

We walked around the central pedestrian circle, and along the primary retail street. The sun shone and the town was humming!

We headed uphill out of town towards the Botanical Gardens, figuring the elevation would provide some good views.

Akureyri has both a rainbow/Pride staircase and a sidewalk

There are several fine buildings along the top of town

Akureyri Junior College is an especially fine example of typical Icelandic building. Corrugated steel, painted, is very common for both exterior walls and roofing – it’s light and space efficient to transport and easy to install without specialist skills.

A major draw of the town is the Botanical Garden, dating to 1910 when women of the town established a Park Association to beautify the city. It is Iceland’s oldest park.

These flowers and shrubs thrive, despite being just 50km South of The Arctic circle because of the rare local micro-climate.

We made our way back to the harbour to join our 1pm excursion, and by now it was pretty obvious that I had a problem with my right wrist. A deep aching pain had set in, and there seemed to be little I could do to moderate it. This would become a bit of a theme of the rest of the trip.

We joined the tour bus and set off around town. One of the first things drawn to our attention was that the stop lights are heart shaped

Our excursion took us back to the Gardens again, and we happily explored a bit more than earlier, and sat and chilled in the sunshine.

We then drove up out of town to a ski center for a wonderful view of the valley.

Then it was back to the tender, and back aboard.