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Akureyi

The last place we stopped in Iceland was Akureyi.   This is a second biggest populated town in Iceland and it's still not very big.  It's quite pretty with lots of different colored houses and is once again surrounded by towering mountains many with snowy tops. 
We have opted not to do the 'nature' trips on this visit to Iceland - we are embracing this opportunity to reckie the lie of the land and come back to explore in our own time possibly hiring a campervan.   The trips from the ship have popular and if we had chosen to use them we would have been disappointed as they were mostly full.  But also they are very much geared to coach parties so we fell a return visit is the best idea and hopefully this is what we will do. 

After yet another an enormous breakfast - we set out into town following a loose guide I had found in another blogpost.  We wanted to look at the 'old' town. Straight away we deviated (i.e. got lost) and ended up at the Botanical Gardens. Very pleasant green area - lots of flowering plants and trees.
Coming out of the gardens we realised we had gained quite alot of height and once again there were spectacular views.  To explore the old town we needed to be back down near the water line and we found a very steep path leading through some woods - nothing ventured nothing gained and down we went... It bought us out more or less where we needed to be on the edge of the oldest bit of town.Some of the building dated back to the mid 1700's but most were 1850's. The strange thing is though, they are so well looked after they just look like new....  The newer i.e. 2000 plus buildings built around them just merge in. 
We walked back into the town centre stopping at the art gallery which was a fantastic space with a very eclectic of art.  Lots of paintings of fjords and quite a bit of contemporary digital art - I'm really not sure how I feel about this... its interesting but not compelling... 
We were invited to use chalk on a chalkboard to leave a contribution I left Dr Fred...
The rest of the gallery was given over to an exhibition called STRANDED - W(H)/ALE A REMAKE PORTFOLIO - MORE THAN THIS, EVEN.  I have very little understanding of what it was other than they were inspired by some old school of Rembrandt whale paintings

It was a nice day out and Dr Fred could defo feel the hills calling... we'll be back!

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