We arrived early in Akureyri, Iceland. Akureyri is the fifth largest town in Iceland with about 20,000 inhabitants.
The tour was to take in nature and, Leah's favorite animal, horses.
We started off from the port and first headed to the Lystigarður Akureyrar, the Akureyri botanical gardens there.
Lots of nice plants and flowers and it was a very pleasant stroll
Then we went to an Icelandic horse farm to see the rare Icelandic Horse.
The icelandic Horse has more gaits than any other horse, 5 to the usual 4.
The 4 are walk, trot, canter, and gallop.
The fifth is Tölt and the sixth is the flying pace.
We got to see the horses in action.
The Tölt is so smooth you can carry a glass of wine on horseback and not spill any as you move at a decent clip.
She rode up and down the line at a fast clip without spilling a single drop.
Pretty neat to see. The horses after the demonstration then got to mingle and get petted by the horse enthusiasts in the crowd.
The owner of the horse farm, the bearded gentleman above, talked about the horses. Among many interesitng things, he stated that due to concerns about the spread of certain horse diseases into Iceland, once an Icelandic horse leaves Iceland to be in a show or is sold and transported to another owner off the island, it can never return back to Iceland.
After that we went to the Goðafoss waterfall.
Named for an event where a Viking that converted to Christianity allegedly threw the idols of the Norse gods into the falls. The waterfall is quite spectacular.
Next, we went to Laufas, an historic manor farm with a manor house dating to 1866 built for the priest, alongside the church built in 1865, replacing earlier churches that had been on that spot since 1047. The manor house has buildings that were interconnected with turf roofs.
The interior is arranged as it was historically in the 1860s.
Pretty cramped quarters but very functional/
The turf roof design was rather interesting.
Iceland was rather poor, and glass for windows was costly to import. Originally, windows were not made of glass but instead from the amnions, perioneum, and even skate skin scrapped thin to form a screen window.
These windows were rather fragile, and vulnerable to both harsh winds and cats.
We then got to depart the tour before it got to the ship for some free time in Akureyri. Some people stayed on the bus but many got off to wander around.
We wandered around I went to a bookshop that had books in both both English and Icelandic.
It seems the ILOH is popular even in the far north of Akureyri, Iceland/
You could also get a set of Harry Potter translated into Icelandic.
I bought a work Icelandic Historical fiction, in English, Swords of Good Men, by Snorri Kristjansson. It's quite good, and once I finish I'll need to pickup the next two in the trilogy on Amazon.
Tash found an Icelandic craft shop and got some good Icelandic wool for weaving and other crafty stuff.
We then headed back to the ship. took a nap after a long day on foot, and then headed to dinner.
For dinner we decided to try the Hibachi Specialty restaurant.
It
has a significant difference from your standard Hibachi - they don't
use fire as part of the entertainment while cooking the food. Open flames on a cruise ship are heavily frowned upon.
Even without the fire, the hilarity of our chef was above and beyond that of a standard
Hibachi restaurant. The guy was hilarious and the performance was top
rate.
and the food was not just amazing but there was way more than a typical Hibachi restaurant, indeed it had special "I Love You" Rice:
Simple fantastic. The entertainment itself was worth the price of the meal, and the meal was more than worth the price.
It was a very long but amazing and fun-filled day.
3 comments:
People these days don't understand how expensive sheet glass was back in the day.
You see the same thing in the American West, where hides were scraped thin, or windows were made of rows of bottles (knock off the necks and chink between them, allows light in but is kind of hard to see through.)
Raised Arabians when I lived in Tx. Went to horse show and they had a showing of the Paso Fino horses from South America. Most spectacular show horse and demo I've ever seen. That was probably 30 years ago. And for me Arabians were the be all and end all but I lost my heart with these horses. Tell your daughter I understand her passion. And that Iceland horse is gorgeous.
Beans: Yep, window glass was very expensive back then, and the Island was barely above a subsistence level until Word War 2 and the arrival of the Americans.
glasslass: Yep, the Icelandic horses we saw were superb. just beautiful and graceful beasts. The kid is definitely a horse-loving girl.
commoncents: You've been on my blogroll for quite awhile already.
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