Thorshofn to Egilsstadir, September 5, 2019

What a remarkable night that was!  We didn’t even have to stay up until three to see the Lights!  I scramble up the TALL steps to my “upper bunk” and sleep like the proverbial. I even wake up early, refreshed and excited to see what today holds!  It’s an easy one and Hildur doesn’t care when we leave!

Sigi brings our HUGE breakfast basket around nine forty-five and that marvelous dog is with him!  He leans against my leg and eventually lies down on my feet!  I love dogs!  (Just too lazy, and travel too much, to have another one!). Everything you can imagine is in the basket, and we get a further lesson in how sheep farming is done Iceland.  They will be setting out tomorrow with six other farmers to gather all the sheep.  They have a cabin they stay in because the treks, by horseback, are usually two days long.

Hildur and Sigi have three children - a daughter ten years old, a son fourteen and another son who is sixteen.  He is away at school in Akureyri.  When we asked if the kids help with the farm, Sigi said, “Yes, they do what they’re told!”  When asked about the different colors of plastic used to wrap the hey, Sigi told us that it doesn’t matter;  but his daughter wanted him to use pink, so that’s why we can see come pink bales.

We ask if it’s okay to take the rest of the freshly baked bread with us, and Sigi says we can take everything!  He asks if there was enough!! (Yes, for a family of four!)

A little blogging, a little dish washing (their fourteen-year old son is in charge of cleaning the cabins and changing the linen.  This will make it a little easier for him!).  We’re off around noon!  What a lovely, lazy day!

(Notes of things I should have added along the way - Our Hyundai has power windows in the front and crank windows in the back!  We worked really hard to get a video of a sheep baa-ing.  Little did we know there’s be a whole sorting shed full of them, all mouthing off!)  

Our only objective today is to make it to Egilsstadir, where we will spend two nights.  Sigi suggests that we take a different route that will take us over a mountain pass and give us a gorgeous view of the fjords.  We are happy to take his advice.

There are a couple of viewpoints that we visit and at one of them we meet Tom, a Canadian who is traveling by himself.  He was camping but has decided it’s too cold at night, even for him.  He recommends a couple of apps, MapsMe and AuroraPro, and tells us about a couple of breweries.

This was scary!  It was a relief when they all moved over into their lane!

See the birds' nest?

The road becomes quite a bit more curvy, with steep grades and more gravel;  but when we start down the other side of the three thousand foot climb, we are rewarded with the stunning views Sigi promised! 

It’s late afternoon and we pull into a picnic area and have our sandwiches from Hildur's bread and the left over cold cuts, and the banana.  We still have some bread and a pear for dinner!

Onward to Egilsstadir.  We are staying at the Brita Guest House, but don’t know quite where it is.  We pull into the N1 parking lot and their wifi is not password protected, so we can find our way on the map!  It’s only a few blocks from here!

We park and go looking for the door with the passcode.  There is a young Italian girl and her mother trying to get in, and we use the passcode Gunnar sent us and we all enter.  We each have a little slip of paper that gives us our room number.  Now we just need to find it!

The mom tells her daughter that she saw ours, number six, outside, so we head back out.  Yea, it’s not out there.  As we come back we meet the daughter who was coming to say we are upstairs.  They are, too!

We gather our things and settle in.  The room is nice;  but we’re coming from paradise!  It suffers by comparison!  But there are two beds, open floor space, a table, and lots of outlets.  And there’s a tv.  We haven’t seen and Icelandic tv and that is part of the experience when you travel.  

After we get all our electronics set up and I grab a shower while the WC is free, we have dinner - packets of chicken salad on the last of Hildi’s bread, the pear, and the last of the Bailey’s.  The tv is showing an episode of Seinfeld with Icelandic subtitles, a cartoon, a Japanese show with Icelandic subtitles, and some Iceland shows.  And the radio runs through the tv.

We’ve decided what we want to do tomorrow that is close to town, and are ready to play computer and get to sleep at a reasonable hour!  Tomorrow we’ll leave for the day and stop at the restaurant for which we’ve been given vouchers, on our way out of town to our next adventure.