{"id":1553,"date":"2023-07-31T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2024-03-10T04:07:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-10T09:07:31","slug":"akureyri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/?p=1553","title":{"rendered":"Akureyri"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The fifth most populous city at ~19,000, situated midway on the craggy North coast of Iceland. Deep in a fjord it\u2019s protected from the worst of the weather and is typically a little milder than neighboring areas – certainly it was glorious the day we visited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I got back to the cabin power was on\/off, and we weren\u2019t quite sure what to do for the best as we needed to shower and get ready for breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By about 08:00 things had stabilized and it became apparent that this would be a tender port, rather than alongside as planned – we\u2019d dropped anchor when we lost power and lost too much time for it to make sense to tie up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tenders being launched before breakfast<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our Panoramic Akureyri excursion wasn\u2019t until 1:00pm, so we decided to go ashore and wander about a bit on our own – it being another stunning<\/strong> day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The view of Akureyri we hadn\u2019t expected<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s opened for general access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Boarding the tender<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Bright, clean, lots of seating<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pedestrian center of town<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We walked around the central pedestrian circle, and along the primary retail street. The sun shone and the town was humming!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We headed uphill out of town towards the Botanical Gardens, figuring the elevation would provide some good views.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pride Staircase<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Akureyri has both a rainbow\/Pride staircase and a sidewalk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are several fine buildings along the top of town<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Well maintained home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s light and space efficient to transport and easy to install without specialist skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Junior College, from 1902<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s oldest park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A reminder to residents that we all matter<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A nice scenic view from the highest stop on our excursion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We then drove up out of town to a ski center for a wonderful view of the valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the Ski Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Then it was back to the tender, and back aboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fifth most populous city at ~19,000, situated midway on the craggy North coast of Iceland. Deep in a fjord it\u2019s protected from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":[],"wpupg_custom_link_nofollow":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[65,47],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel-2","tag-iceland","tag-viking"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/d6bcf1e9-d3c4-4230-a7c9-d91e2742fb0d-47697-000009f41251d6b0_file.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sePLXi-akureyri","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1559,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions\/1559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.captainsglen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}