Skogar Museum & A Snowstorm

 By this time, we have packing down to a science!!  We never unpack clothes - just put back in the suitcase what we wore the day before and laid out what to wear the next day!  NOBODY ever saw what we wore under our coats except at meals!  Once again, I was SO HAPPY we only took 4 pairs of pants and 4 tops and just wore them over and over!  Made packing each day pretty easy!

Another wonderful breakfast and one last picture in the bathroom of our cabin!!  Have you ever seen anything like this before?  I was totally in awe of this water heater on the wall!

Today will be a shorter day - mainly because our guide has informed us that snow is coming and we must make sure we get over the mountain pass before it closes!  HMMMMMMMMM

We stop at a really nice shopping center that has a bakery/coffee area - we're supposed to pick up our lunch again - which we do - but I can't help buy this cinnamon roll - oh my gosh it was good!

Remember the church up on the hill that our guide told us we might have time to stop at?  Well it was first on the list today!!  Unfortunately the wind was crazy up on this hill - we didn't stay out very long - just time enough to grab a couple of pictures!

This is looking down from the church - you can just tell that snow is in the air!

We saw beautiful coastline views today on our way to the Skogar Museum!  Our guide told us we would have to make this a quicker than usual stop because of the weather!  The inside museum was wonderful - we had a nice tour guide inside that spoke to us in several rooms of the museum - I was thrilled when she talked a little bit about Christmas!  And told us the story of the trolls/elves/gnomes whatever you want to call them that make up the story at Christmas time!  And I DID know a little bit about it as I had actually watched a Hallmark Christmas movie set in Reykjavik and a little was told about this story!

We breezed through the inside as we sure wanted to make time for the outside!  Here are replicas of what the early Icelandic people lived in!  Most of them you had to duck to get into!

They were cute as can be on the outside but the inside of them told the complete story!

Here is one of the beds!  Part of the sideboard actually comes off during the day and the bed becomes a bench to sit on - at night, there could be several people sleeping in one bed so the sideboard is put up to keep the people in the bed!

There was no heat except for body heat!  Iceland does NOT have many trees at all so wood couldn't be burned - sheep dung was used to cook but the smell and the smoke of the dung was strong so a kitchen was always in a separate place!

We could have spent a lot more time here but we needed to leave to get over the pass!  We were actually supposed to go to the exhibition of the Lava Centre but that had to be cancelled!     Not far from this museum is another beautiful waterfall - this one is famous because it's the one from Game of Thrones - I have never watched it!  

And then it was time to head towards the capitol city!  By this time it's snowing, the road is snow packed and the wind is bad!  I wasn't too concerned since we live in Colorado and snow and blizzards happen quite frequently!  

This is what it looked like out the window!

Everybody else was heading for the city also - I couldn't watch the road as people drive WAY too close to each other, especially when one had to slam on the brakes!  So I did fine by just looking out the window or getting on my phone!

We finally made it to the city - the streets were an absolute mess - and later we found out that this was a historic snowfall coming this time of year - the last time Reykjavik had gotten snow in October was back in 1921!  And because the snow season doesn't usually hit until the end of November, nobody had their snow tires on!  There were cars stranded all over and people pushing buses, etc.   What a mess!

We were back at our original hotel, The Skuggi and this was the scene outside our window!

I never did get the exact amount of snow - some places said 10 1/2", some said 16!  However much it was, it basically shut the city down!

By late afternoon it had quit snowing - we had to go out to eat dinner and most of the places were uphill so we bundled up good and headed out with a restaurant in mind!  It was slow going, deep snow in places that had NOT been shoveled and of course ice underneath!

I would always put the address into my phone and we finally decided after we made it to the restaurant, that the directions they would give were NOT the best ones at all!  We wanted to walk down the "shopping" street and it never took us that way!  Dang!  I got quite good at following my instincts instead of the darn directions and we did just fine!  And anyone who knows me, knows I have NO SENSE of direction so I was pretty proud of myself!

At the restaurant we ordered this and split it!  Absolutely delicious!  It was a flatbread with medium rare steak on it along with spices and tomatos and lettuce and truffle oil - we both loved it!

It was fun to FINALLY walk on the shopping street!  And we both decided we needed to buy a pair of crampons because we were so scared we were going to slip on the snow or ice and fall!  One store sold them for $80 - HA!   But I had checked online and it said the BONUS grocery store had them - we found it, actually found the crampons on an endcap and they were $8.00 a pair - can't beat that!  We opened them immediately and put them on!

We stopped for gelato at a place (and yes, crampons have to be taken off each time you walk into a store) and Patty had a good kind but I didn't care for mine!

It was absolutely gorgeous outside in spite of the cold!  Patty snapped this picture on the way home as it just reminded us of Christmas!

We made it back safe and sound to our hotel!