May 23 - Siglufjӧrdur and Hrísey Island

We were both pretty tired so decided to skip this morning’s excursion to the Herring Museum and try to catch up on sleep.  Maybe we’ll stop back on our land travel around the island.  The small town was very picturesque.

Jessica and Tara took the tour which included a stop (and samples) at Frida’s Chocolate shops, the Herring Museum, 

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More photos of the Herring Museum
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and a demonstration of herring processing (and free samples),

There was also a bit of a party on the dock.

And even the sea gulls had a feast with the left over herring.

In the afternoon we arrived in Hrísey Island in the Eyjafjorour Fjord.  This was in place of the planned visit to Grímsey Island, right on the Arctic Circle.  The waves were too high to go to Grímsey.  The ship docked out in the fjord and we tendered into the dock on zodiacs.  The wind was up and several of us got rather wet on the way in.

Hrísey was a quaint little island and is the second-largest island off the coast of Iceland.  Most of it is a nature preserve and bird sanctuary and it is forbidden to kill birds on the island.  There is a very small village of about 120 people. 

The first thing we saw was a small park with a zip line and a large bouncy area.  Several people from the ship immediately decided to try the zip line.  Jessica opted for the bouncy area and spent some time on it with some of the local children.  The children start learning English very early in school and all of the children spoke very good English.

Jessica playing with the local children

There was also a small church. 

We decided to walk along the road for a while to get some views of the mountains and the fjord.

We didn’t stay on the island very long as it was windy and rather cold.

Later afternoon we headed out for our next stop but very slowly as it is actually very close...and the scenery was lovely. 

Along the way we were totally entertained by a very energetic humpback whale.  It spent about a half an hour doing breeches for all of our enjoyment.  

After dinner we went back to the lounge for another talk about the folklore of Iceland interspersed with folk songs by one of the guides who is also an opera singer and who has a really beautiful voice.

More cruising...