Our time on the east coast was short, since we needed to head north to Húsavík first thing in the morning! We organized ourselves for our journey and headed on our way.

Day 4
We woke up early to drive into Húsavík, a town in northern Iceland that is fondly called “The Whale Watching Capital of Iceland.” We drove through the mountains after stopping at a local bakery to get some pastries for breakfast. The language barrier was a little harder in this area, so we ended up getting a huge cinnamon roll instead of a bagel, but I wasn’t upset about it (haha). During our drive, we saw a countless number of waterfalls throughout the mountains, and it even snowed a little!

When we arrived in Húsavík we checked in for our whale and puffin watching tour. As we waited for our tour to begin, we walked around the docks and stopped at the cafe attached to the tour company to get some coffee. The town was adorable. A small village, resting in the shadow of the snowy mountains. The harder was filled with boats, some for tourists and others for the locals to fish with.

Sadly, our tour was cancelled due to high winds and rough seas… We could have waited for the afternoon tour, but there was still no chance of seeing puffins because the seas were too rough. Luckily, the tour company had a whale watching tour in a fjord not too far from Húsavík, with better conditions (but sadly no puffins).

We drove to Hjalteyri for our whale watching tour, and it was still a great experience! We bundled up in our tour-provided overalls, and saw two humpback whales and a few porpoises that followed our boat! On our way back to the docks, we enjoyed some delicious homemade cinnamon buns and hot coco to warm up.

The rest of our day was fairly relaxing. We checked into our Airbnb in Akureyi, and had some time to take in the scenery before heading to dinner at Strikið.

With views of the whole city, this was one of our favorite meals of the whole trip. We started off our meal with some soft shell crab and sushi, followed by our main courses, beef tenderloin and cod. A wonderful place to reminisce about our trip thus far.

We ended our night relaxing at our Airbnb. Our host was gracious enough to fill the hot tub for us, and we enjoyed some sunshine and a beer (at 10pm!!). This was our first time experiencing the sun never setting, since we were so far north. It was such a cool experience! Akureyi quickly became our favorite city on the trip. Everything about it was so peaceful, and the views were nothing short of amazing. We were sad we only had one night in this northern town.

This was the first day that we didn’t set an alarm. Our trip was go-go-go up until this point, so it was really nice to sleep in and have a relaxing morning.

We headed out for breakfast at Kaffi Ilmar. I enjoyed a huge breakfast (the viking), while Brian partook in another bowl of fish soup (it’s seriously so good, guys!). The restaurant was so cozy inside, but since it was such a gorgeous day so everyone was eating out on the patio. We enjoyed our food, some people watching, and even had the cafe’s cat join us for a while.

Before our drive back towards Reykjavik, we walked around Akureyri and took in the views one last time.

On our way back west, we drove to Spakonufellshofol. We heard this was a good place for bird watching, and were hoping to see some puffins. But, unfortunately we did not see any. The views of the north we beautiful, but we needed to keep moving to make it back to our hotel.

Feeling slightly defeated, we continued to drive west towards Kolugljufur. We were scared that this would be a disappointing stop, but it was so beautiful! Another gorgeous waterfall to brighten our day! We took some time here to climb through the rocks and take in the scenery.

Just outside of Reykjavik, we stopped at a little town to see a lighthouse that Brian read about. It was a fun little stop, with little painted rocks and gnomes scattered around the lighthouse.

After our day of driving, we arrived in Reykjavik and checked into our hotel. We walked around downtown before stumbling into Public House for a light dinner and a good night sleep.

Want to see how our trip ends? Check out my third and final itinerary post!