Seydisfjordur Town Walk
Saturday night, I had been reading the ‘newsletter’ for Sunday, and it said to set our watches ahead an hour. So I made that note in my head before I went to sleep. When I got up on Sunday, it thought it was 6:00 AM. I got up and got dressed and wondered if I should wake Hubby. We didn’t need to meet for our excursion until 9:45, but we were supposed to allow 30 minutes for the tender ride. Yes, we were riding tenders again today.
Hubby finally woke up after 7 AM and got dressed. We went to the Main Dining room for breakfast, only to be told it was 7:45, and they didn’t open until 8, and we don’t set the clocks ahead until tonight. So we went to the buffet for breakfast. Hubby got a made-to-order omelet with just about everything in it. I started with a couple pastries and a bowl of cream of wheat, then went back for scrambled, eggs, bacon, ham and potatoes o’brien. I also had a glass of orange juice and then one of pineapple juice.
Now that I knew I had actually gotten up at 5, I was tired, so I laid back down for about an hour. Or maybe not quite an hour.
The tender ride, as usual, was uneventful. Once on shore, a man was looking at our excursion tickets and sending each excursion to a different location to wait.
Our excursion time was 9:45, but it was a bit after that before all of us showed up and the guide could get started. This was a walk through town, so there was no getting away from walking today. I hoped it wouldn’t be a forced march.
I wasn’t encouraged by the first leg of the walk, for it took us past 4-5 idling buses, and she hurried us along to get us past the noise and fumes. But that was only about a block. After that, she slowed down a bit, and stopped frequently, so we were mostly able to keep up, although our knees and feet did get tired.
The tour guide was very knowledgeable about the history and rules of the town. There is a lagoon on the edge of the fjord that was traversed by a sidewalk and street. She even explained that it was illegal to fish from that bridge. The river running through the middle of town emptied into that lagoon, and a lot of fish traveled up the fjord, into the lagoon and then up the river, and it was considered ‘unsporting’ to fish from the bridge, before they had a chance to get up the river.
She also talked about the avalanches and mudslides that their village has been subjected to. They are in the midst of constructing barriers that are intended to send avalanches in a different direction, away from the houses directly below. She also told us how a party of archeologists were busy digging through the sites where these barriers were scheduled to be built, trying to find as much of history as they could before the area was no longer available to them. I’m always interested in hearing about archeology, but that was about all she had to say on the subject.
She took us down Rainbow Street, the main commercial street in the village. It’s named for the repeating rainbow pattern painted on its center. At one point, sidewalk-type blocks had been placed down the middle of the street, but after a time, they broke into large sections. A business owner on the street got the idea of painting them in the colors of the rainbow, to make them more visible, and the colors have been there ever since. Each May, the entire village gets involved in painting the broken blocks.
She told us of the ‘adventures’ of the US troops that were stationed there during the 2nd world war. They strung submarine nets in the fjord, but never caught a submarine, although 2 whales did lose their lives due to the nets. The town also was subjected to spy planes flying low overhead to take pictures, and the Americans would try to shoot them down, but didn’t manage it. But a theater was built in town so the solders would have something to do, and that theater was still in use today. A community center has been built attached to it.
Eventually, we got back to our starting point, where there were several posters of interviews of people who suffered from the most recent mudslide, only 3 or 4 years ago. Across the street was the town’s information center, and Hubby and I sat down and relaxed for a few minutes. Then he walked back to those posters about the mudslide and took pictures. The tour guide had been talking to other members of our group, and then Hubby conversed with her for a few minutes.
There was a water fall just on the edge of town, where the melting snow fell down from near the top of the mountain to the bottom. We could see the waterfall pretty well from the information center, and could see lots of people walking up the path next to it. The path only went about halfway up the mountain, but even that didn’t look like an easy climb.
The tour guide stated the town had 640 citizens during the winter, and 680 during the summer. I didn’t realize she and her family were among those who left for the winter until Hubby mentioned it after he had talked to her.
Having rested a bit, we walked back to the pier, where our cruise line was handing out cups of hot chocolate. Although I had sweated during the walking, my hands and face were quite chilled, and a cup of hot cocoa really hit the spot. Then we reported back to the ship and had some lunch, though I don’t remember where we went or what we had.
Later, we had supper at Aqua, another complimentary dining room. I ordered a beef dish that turned out to be beef kabobs by another name. I wasn’t completely happy that when I removed the beef pieces from the skewers, they were still pink, but I was determined to put up with it. Unfortunately, the first piece of meat I put in my mouth refused to break down into pieces small enough to swallow. I knew something was wrong when Hubby looked up as he was half-way through his meal and asked if I was still chewing my first bite. After that, I started cutting the chunks of beef in two, and had to ask for a steak knife so that I could do that! Eventually, I felt I had done my duty to the meal and dismissed that dish to order dessert.
I had ordered wine with my meal. I specified I wanted the sweetest wine they had. They brought me a Riesling, and it was decently sweet, so I was happy with that aspect of the meal. I decided I probably shouldn’t judge a restaurant by one dish, so we decided to give Aqua another try a little later in the trip.
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