Day 5 - Svartaborg, Iceland - September 4, 2025

Today is our first very needed rest day, we have less than an hour of driving today! We started the morning around Akureyri, visiting the photo stops, gift shops and the local bookstore. I finally got a pair of gloves my hands have desperately been needing and I’ve checked every bookstore for their version of Harry Potter! I swear the cover is different every time!

We found a little restaurant called Terían Brasserie that did a sampler brunch! You could choose 3, 5, or 7 sampling sized options from the menu. I had never seen anything like this and thought it was the best thing ever! Taylor got the fruit bowl, pancakes, and museli while I opted for the pancakes, croissant, and ravioli. Everything was delicious, 10/10!

We then visited the famous church in Akureyri but unfortunately there was a funeral this morning so we did not want to enter and disturb. We then decided to run to the grocery store since we were staying in an Airbnb in the middle of nowhere tonight and we’re going to have to cook dinner. We stopped at Bónus since Taylor liked their cute pig logo. We grabbed some pasta, chicken and waffles for the morning. Driving down the road we realized their stop lights in this city are made of hearts, how cute!

We pulled into the Airbnb right at our 3pm check in and could not wait to take a nap and get cozy! It was perfect timing, as soon as we walked in the door it started to pour down rain. It’s interesting since it rains quite a lot here, but there is never a strike of lightning or rumble of thunder.

After our little nap we cooked dinner, and yes we did get confused on how the European appliances worked! We had pasta that was delicious, but the chicken wings did not turn out very good. It’s okay though because the lava cakes came out perfect!

We played a game of connect four and chess for a little while, I won connect four and we tied at chess. I choked really bad and should have won. We decided to take a dip in the private little hot tub we had but it was way too hot to stay in for long. It was natural water from the ground so you couldn’t control the temperature, kinda cool! After that we winded down in bed and turned on the TV, they had Netflix!

Stay tuned for whale watching and more fun tomorrow!

Ben :)