"You're going to have to explain this music to me," I said to Kay.

We were filling our cars at the station near her house.  In the car on the way over, there was some really strange music on the radio, and as Iceland has been an incubator of interesting music I thought it possible I was hearing some interesting trend.

When we got on the road to Kopavogur, me following her, I suddenly figured out what it was.  A children's program.  You have no idea how freaky children's music sounds if you don't know the language.

We returned the car without incident.  Kay and I drove to Hafnarfjörður.  In Iceland each car has two sets of tires: summer and winter.  Kay hadn't had hers changed over to summer yet, so we stopped at a service station while they switched them over.  The process took roughly ten minutes, and we were on the way to her mother's house to leave the tires in the garage.

The area in Hafnarfjörður where Kay's mother lives looks like any American subdivision, complete with cul de sac, though the houses are quite compact and more interestingly designed (Iceland has thankfully been spared the scourge of American neotraditional architecture).  On the way there we passed the president's residence, a modest complex including church built on a promontory by the sea.

Mission accomplished, we headed back into Reykjavík.  We stopped to buy stamps for my postcards, and at a bakery for sandwiches and pastries for lunch.  Kay got ham sandwiches for both her and Craig; I got salmon.  The sandwiches were huge, and I got little more than halfway through mine before lox fatigue set in.

The plan was to hit the road for Akureyri at 2.  It was now 1.  Craig wanted to get his hair cut, and I wanted to go to the pool, as (I hesitate to mention this) I had not showered since Wednesday morning, due to the unfortunate situation with Kay's tenants, and I was starting to smell.  Kay sent us both off in our separate directions.

What Kay did not anticipate when she sent me off to the pool at 1:00 and expected us to be on the road to Akureyri at 2:00 is that I am occasionally stunningly stupid.  Instead of doing something sensible like ask where the nearest pool was, I just walked to the only pool whose location I knew, the one next to the youth hostel, about 25 minutes away.  Once there, I showered quickly, then laid in a hot tub for a while, swam for a bit, laid in the hot tub some more, showered again, dressed, and left.  Quick though I tried to be, it was nearly 2:00 when I left the pool.  I hurried back, only to be greeted at the door by a stern Kay.

"Grrr," she said.  "And that's all I have to say on the subject."

"I came back as quick as I could," I protested.  "It's a long way to the pool by the youth hostel."  It's worth noting that the pool by the youth hostel actually has a name, Laugardalslaug, which I consistently cannot remember.

"You walked all the way down there?"  She was a little more sympathetic now. "But there's one right across the street."

"You didn't tell me about that."

"Yes, I did."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, I guess I wasn't paying attention."

"Apparently not."

We got in the car, and after stopping at the DHL office on the way out of town to pick up a package for Craig, we got on the road to Akureyri.

The drive was uneventful, and for the most part we admired the scenery and discussed whatever crossed our minds, largely music, as the three of us all have expansive and impeccable taste (people who know me would do well not to point out the severe lapse in judgment that resulted in the acquisition of a Gloria Gaynor comeback album in 1995, thanks).

We stopped for a break at Staðarskali, a roadside restaurant and service center whose logo is what looks like an evil chef winking as he sips from a ladle full of blood, that is about halfway between Reykjavík and Akureyri. Craig and I ordered hot dogs; Kay got ice cream.  Ever-curious about foreign soft drinks, I got an Orka, a sort of carbonated energy drink with ginseng and guarana that comes in a blue-grey bottle but is in fact, clear.

"So how is it?" Craig asked.

"Not terrible," I said.  It wasn't terrible.  Nothing I'd go out of my way for, though.

The road soon made the turn east toward Akureyri.  Kay pointed out a church on a farm that she said she always used to keep an eye out for when she was a kid.  I used to watch for the train station in Richmond on drives from Raleigh to DC the same way.  In the distance at one point we could see and island rising high from the sea.

"It was significant in Grettir's Saga," Kay said.  "But I can't remember exactly what happened there."

I checked my Lonely Planet, which frequently has explanations of sites' significance in the sagas, to see if it had anything.

"I found it," I said.

"What happened?"

"Grettir and his brother were murdered there."

"Oh."

We got into Akureyri shortly after 7.  We were staying with a friend of Kay's, Sigrun, and her 2-year-old son Patrekur.  Sigrun's fiance was a fisherman, and was out at sea at the moment.  Patrekur didn't like us.

"You don't speak Icelandic," Kay said, "so he thinks you can't speak at all."

Dinner was ready only a few minutes after we arrived.  Sigrun had made a chicken curry casserole, which was excellent, though she protested that she couldn't cook.

Around 11, the babysitters Sigrun had hired came, and we headed into town for a few drinks at Kaffi Akureyri.  It was a pleasant evening, no need for jackets, so it was a nice walk.  Kaffi Akureyri was much the same as I remembered it from my first trip.  The Guinness here was drinkable ("like a good Murphy's," Craig commented), but horrifically expensive.  The streets outside teemed with new high school graduates.  We were going to Kay's sister's graduation party tomorrow.

"It's a table full of Americans."  Kay pointed to the table next to us.

"How can you tell?" I asked skeptically.

"They're wearing white socks."

"Could be Canadian."

"Maybe."

Kay turned out to be right.  I ran into a couple of them in the bathroom, and the accent was decidedly American.

As for me, the fact that I had a good bit of a buzz going doesn't diminish the sincerity of my enthusiasm for being back in Akureyri.  I was having trouble stopping smiling, or so Kay says.

After a few rounds we went across the street to a late night grill for a sandwich that's apparently an Akureyri specialty: a hamburger bun with french fries, cheese, and a ketchup-like sauce.  Good stuff--beats White Castle as drunk food any day.

On the less wise side of things I ordered a bottle of malt extrakt.  I had no idea what this was, but I was sampling the local beverages again.  I can very confidently suggest that no visitor to Iceland ever drink malt extrakt.  Its taste was strange if inoffensive at first, but quite steadily reminded me more and more of what one might get if one were to attempt to turn
Kaopectate into a soft drink.  Best avoided.  Trust me.
 

dawn in Akureyri

The sky had never grown dark, but now it was pink with the new dawn.  When we got back to Sigrun's Craig and I grabbed our cameras and headed back out again, mildly buzzed foreigners going down to the shipyards to take pictures of early morning Akureyri.

 May 25: Akureyri
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