rest day: Akureyri

Just milling around the picturesque city of Akureyri today, drinking lots of coffee while using the internet, stocking up on food at the discount chain grocery store and in general taking it easy. It feels like a vacation! Currently sipping a beer ("Egils Gull") and a shot of something called Opal (which tastes just like kids' cough syrup) at the Backpacker Bar inside the city's youth hostel.

My campground neighbor- a very charismatic Aussie named Craig- is in the midst of a 1.5yr bike journey that's so far brought him through Asia, the Middle East, a good chunk of Europe and now Iceland. Next on his agenda is Greenland (sans bike, as there are no real roads there) then back through Europe (he's only visited 30 of the 50 countries and intends to hit them all) and eventually into Africa. Yikes, that's a plan. But we're heading the same general direction and are going to ride together for the next few days. Perfect!!! I would really appreciate having some good company on the road, and it will especially nice to have a partner to trade pulls into the winds tomorrow as we head north to Husavik to check out the Icelandic Phallus Museum (yes, that's right, they have a museum with the largest collection of 'specimens' in the world... and how can you pass that up when it's only 62mi away?? It's animal specimens, not human... but you never know.)

From there it's a short jaunt down to Lake Myvatn where I'm planning to spend several days hiking up into the geologic/volcanic features in the national park surrounding the lake.

"Knit-Bombing" Akureyri style