The View From My Beer
I looked hard today, but could not find a bar or pub anywhere in town. So instead I settled on a visit to the local supermarket to purchase a can of Thule Pilsener. Finding a good view for my beer was the easy part.
Grundarfjörður
The sixth, and final, stop on my 16-day cruise to Greenland and Iceland. We have returned to the Westfjords region in Iceland’s west. The town of Grundarfjörður has a population of around 900, which swells considerably when a ship carrying over 4,000 people arrives.
My Walk
Today started out wet, so I delayed my departure from the ship hoping for the sun to come out as predicted around lunch-time. We had an early departure today with the last water taxi scheduled for 4PM. My research had suggested the one must do item in Grundarfjörður was the walk to Kirkjufell (Church Mountain) and nearby Kirkjufoss (Church Waterfall).
As I boarded the water taxi I met Isaac, who works at the pool bar and does an excellent job of ensuring I always have a cold beer ready when needed. Actually, sometimes he does too good a job and has another beer ready when I really wasn’t planning on having another! He was planning on visiting a different waterfall to me, but ultimately decided to accompany me on my visit to Kirkjufell.
Kirkjufell
It was a fifty minute walk to Kirkjufell. The town itself was not quite as interesting as the other ports we had visited recently visited. But once we got out of town the scenery was quite stunning. Kirkjufell had something of a haunting appearance that reminded me of the mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I had seen photos of Kirkjufell previously. From the ship the mountain looked distinctly different and I wasn’t sure if that was the target for my walk. As we got close and viewed it from ‘front-on’ it took on a more distinctive conic shape.
Grundarfjordur
We returned to town, at which point Isaac needed to get back on the ship to start his shift, including making sure a nice cold beer was ready for me on my return. I wanted to find a bar to capture a view from my beer. As it turned out, there wasn’t anything close to a bar in town, so I decided to purchase a can of local beer and then find a nice view.
I didn’t have the chance to use restrooms at a opub, so i sought out some public restrooms. What I found was very interesting. The public restroom had elaborate equipment installed to charge customers who wanted to ‘spend a penny’. This included CCTV to identify anyone ‘caught short’. I’m not quite sure if different needs cost different amounts. Fortunately there was a sign posted saying that cruise guests were allowed to enter for free. otherwise this would have been my very first experience at using a creadit card (or smartphone) to pay to use the loo!
Outside the church is a statue known as ‘Syn’. It depicts a woman looking out towards the sea as a tribute to fishermen. Next that that is another interesting sculpture known as ‘Veðurhorfur’. It contains 113 of the 130 words in the Icelandic that are used to describe wind. The number 113 was chosen by the artist because that is the emergency number in Iceland in the same way as we have ‘000’ in Australia and ‘911’ in USA.
Grunderfoss
I decided to use the remaining time visiting the other waterfalls (Grunderfoss) that isaac and other cruise passengers had talked about visiting. It was in the opposite direction to Kirkjufoss and was going to take me about 40 minutes to reach. I didn’t have a lot of time as it was 14:15 and I needed to back before the last water taxi returned to the ship at 16:00. There were a series of waterfalls in the area. I didn’t have time to get real close to the waterfalls, but it was a nice walk and allowed me to make full use of my last remaining time in Iceland.
Farewell Iceland
This was my last port of call on my 60-day Northern European experience. It is difficult to know for sure when, or even if, I might return back to this part of the world as there is so much more out there I have yet to visit. So it was with mixed emotions that I took one last look back at the scene of today’s walk, and the view from my beer. We now have three sea-days ahead of us before we arrive back in Southampton and I turn my attentions to my next experience.
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