The Sleepy Towns of North Iceland 🇮🇸 | Akureyri, Siglufjordur and Olafsfjordur

Intro Greetings from Iceland and welcome to yet another vlog from this Icelandic adventure. This morning we started off with our two week long road trip across Iceland and the first leg of this road trip is going to be a four hour drive to this sleepy fishing town in the north of Iceland called Siglufjordur. Siglufjordur is going  to be one of the three fishing towns of north Iceland that we'll be exploring in the next three days So buckle up and join us on this journey The best way to travel Iceland is by taking a self-drive. All these well publicised tourist hot spots across Iceland that you see yeah I'm sure they must be beautiful but the real gut, the meat of Iceland is in these drives Because for the last four hours this place has been surprising us every second, every turn of the road, every direction... Turn left Siglufur We just finished our four hour drive and we finally hit our first pitstop of this road trip Siglufjordur. Now when we were entering this town we saw that the weather was this grey, dull and dead sort of a weather and then we cruised through this town for like five minutes so we could come at this spot which is like this nice vantage point to see this town and man in those five minutes the weather has turned into this From grey, dull and dead to 8k, high-dynamic range, OLED sort of a weather I guess that sums it up about Iceland's weather right It turns faster than a DJ's turntable So Siglufjordur is a small town tucked away in a fjord  between these two massive mountain ranges   A fjord is basically what used to be a glacier but then the glacier   melted away and left this water in its space. For a really small town such as this it has surprisingly a longer history And it's likely that people have been coming here for ages because of the potential for fishing like in the 17th century people came here for shark fishing and then there would have been like a small patch of road with like five to six turf houses and that was it This place is also prone to avalanches in the winter so these settlements had to be moved until they could find like a cozy spot and then that became the place where the rest of the town began to grow Siglufjordur has had a bit of an  independent streak simply because they have been isolated because of their geographical location right Like nobody could access this place even if they wanted to so if they had to get here there was no land access they had to come either by sea planes or by boats This is why it has a reputation amongst the Icelanders supposedly that it's a bit of a rebel town. More recently Siglufjordur has been connected to the rest of Iceland through the Arctic coast way and so Akureyri to Siglufjordur there is a tunnel because of that you have tourists coming in and some of the locals have also revived you know the cafes, they've converted some of these  buildings into restaurants and guest houses   and something like that is important for a town  like this to survive All these are supposedly, not supposedly, All these are restaurants all these, the yellow & the red building on the other side And they're not just restaurants they're like amongst the most happening restaurants right in uh in Siglufjordur but then they're only open half of the year or maybe even like one third of the year during the summer around the summer when the tourism industry you know is at its peak. We are here during spring and during spring they're shut but if somebody's here during summer you should maybe try out these places A lot of uh rave reviews online about these places Siglufjordur is much more sleepier than we thought, so, the restaurants that we wanted to go to were shut because it's, it's not summer yet. So we finally found one place which serves fish and chips and we're here and the place pretty much serves only fish and chips. Both me and Pooj are vegetarians and me especially I'm not a big fan of the way fish smells I'm giving it a shot today. Let's see if I like fish in this form It's actually good dude, there's no smell. I can belt this. It's cooked well? Yeah it's cooked well yes and it's good. It's good in the sense like I I'm.. I'm eating it because there's no other option right now but uh It's good. I can eat it. It's not as bad as I expected it to be. See? You learn something new every day. I love these colors man. Yeah! No? All bright colored buildings like see, look at this. I think they want to stand out against the snow. Huh? They do it deliberately cause you need to see it in the snow Olafur Okay good morning guys, today we are at the small town of Olafsjordur. Olafs-fjord-ur because obviously it's next to a fjord Olafsfjordur is the is the sister town of Siglufjordur The town that we explored yesterday and these towns are so close to each other that the same municipal body governs both these towns and they're separated by a 10 minute long tunnel So we're out on the streets of Olafsfjordur and   one of the things we found online when we were looking up this this town was that a few years ago there was an artist residency which was held here and one of the artists she spoke to the townspeople and decided to do up these murals of trolls across buildings in the town and that represents the people who live in those buildings itself so today we thought we'd do a little you know troll hunt of sorts Let's see how many trolls we are able to spot That's a raven on a walking stick You know around here there are a lot of ravens Have you noticed? And they're huge! Like the polished version of Indian crows So that's troll number three We have a girl with a beast I don't want to eat it, cause hygiene So I don't know if you guys can see it but there's this one troll thats swimming through the thing. and I guess that's the swimming pool Aaaah... Troll auntie has got me. That's such an Indian thing to say. Troll auntie. We have reached our seventh troll and I think we're gonna stop here is that seventh or sixth? I think sixth or seventh? I think it's the seventh. Yeah okay okay seventh yeah. So we're pretty pleased that our visit to trolls peninsula has not gone without spotting enough trolls and we're gonna go onwards from here and on to our next destination which is going to be a little bustling town again in the north of Iceland and we'll see you there Akureyri We're in the third and the final pit stop in our Northern Iceland town hopping and we are in this "city" called Akureyri And uh.. Akureyri has a population of about twenty thousand people and twenty thousand is not a lot in most part of the world but here in Iceland twenty thousand is good enough to be considered a city Plan today, is just like the previous two towns walk around, take the place in, visit a few museums visit the church and then get some good food and chill Oldest house in Akurey So right now we are at the oldest house in Akureyri called the Laxdalshus, which was built somewhere around 1795. This house has seen the history of Akureyri and it has been actively a part of the history of Akureyri Akureyri is at the edge of a fjord and because the waters of the fjord are really calm it's a perfect spot for a harbor and this is the only piece of land between the Arctic and Iceland that could be used for trade. So this grew as a commercial center and there were a lot of danish merchants who came and settled down here and they were the ones who built this house. Because there was a scarcity of wood, for the longest time people didn't really demolish houses. They usually rebuilt and repurpose their houses and each house takes on like many different roles depending on what time or era it is in In fact speaking of, uh you know there not being a lot of wood available, in the 1830s, in this entire town of Akureyri, there were only two trees and one of the trees you see is right behind us. So this tree is as old as the house. Land Rover Defender So this right here is like my dream car I think it's a 65 or a 70 Land rover Defender. Someday if I can afford it and more importantly if somebody is willing to sell it I can get my hands on one of these So we are at Brynja ice cream in Akureyri which is one of the   best and oldest ice cream joints in Akureyri A vanilla ice cream with a caramel frosting and then there's gummy bears, there's candy and there's gems like this is.. I just have such high expectations of this Just the right texture I'm just so happy looking at this One more candidate to watch it it has a differential in the front wheel dude Did you see that? No, I did not notice. I was just hung up on the colour. Botanical Garden We're actually on the way to Akureyri's main church Between the ice cream place and the church there's this botanical garden which   uh which a lot of people recommend. So we thought we might as well go and check it out So that's what we're doing but then unfortunately it's spring   so all the leaves are down. The garden doesn't look as green as we'd expect it to be but you never know there might be surprises waiting for us inside, so we decided to go in So this is a greenhouse where they keep where they grow a lot of plants So I think they basically grow these plants and then propagate it throughout the garden especially during summer when the weather is good Shravan thinks there's only two  kinds of flowers in the world Sunflowers and rose He does not know that anything else exists So Ii just read something interesting about this uh this botanical garden Apparently it was started in 1912 by the housewives of Akureyri they wanted to beautify the city and so they had received this one hectare of land from the city municipal or whatever and the women started this garden and eventually this garden became the first public park in Iceland and in 1953 the city saw potential in it and it took over the garden and they converted into a botanical garden where they started growing all these fancy trees and flowers and you know fruits and what not Women power! Akureyri Church okay we are right in front of akurey kirkya or uh  akureri church kokiya meaning church like duh yeah you can see it right behind me this particular  church was built by the exact same guy who built the house in kokia which we found in reykjavik and you can also see the the basalt column theme all throughout the church they appear very  modern and the architecture also is kind of modern and they're also much much younger right most of these churches at least this guy was built in 1940. unfortunately we couldn't go inside  because uh google screwed us over it said that the church is going to be open till like seven o'clock but then when we came here it's it's kind of like 5 30 right now but it's closed Like half an hour back we kind of broke our camera lens and there was a bit of a panic moment and we somehow figured to put it back together and We went to that street called Hafnar street (Hafnarstræti) but it was not as long as we expected it to be. It was, it was not crowded also and most of the restaurants there, they seemed like a bit of a tourist trap so we decided to not eat there. and we found this other restaurant which is a little towards the, I guess the north of Akureyri so we're headed there now to have our early dinner So we ordered like this potato dish and a mushroom based vegan pizza The potato is really good The pizza is, I would give it like a seven on ten It's a good pizza or not like great I'm still a big fan of uh Brik Oven and that's my number one pizza. But the portions may be enough, if it's not enough we'll go back home and It's gonna be another round of Maggie before we sleep What do you say Pooj? That sounds so sad :( Okay people, if you've stuck around till now then we're glad that you could stay with us through this leg of the journey We hope that you could experience some of the wonder that we did while we explored these three charming little towns Now, tomorrow is going to be a new day in a fresh place and we hope that Iceland continues to surprise us just like the way that it has surprised us in the last three days