A beautiful day in Vestmannaeyjabaer

What a great day. After breakfast we drove to a bird watching hut that we had learned about on yesterday’s afternoon boat tour. It is a small hut with indoor and outdoor viewing of a cliff side with hundreds of puffin burrows. On the cliff we saw tons of puffins. Sage can very clearly say “puffin”. She was very excited to point them all out, and say “Hi Puffin!”

Then we drove to the base of Eldfell volcano, which erupted in 1973, increasing the size of the island by 2km and causing the island to evacuate before enveloping a portion of the town. We had climbed this before with Sheryl and Brian, but this time it was clear so we could see the town and the ocean on each side. The view was beautiful.

Once down we went into town and met Melissa, Jason and their son Jack at a local café. We ate delicious freshly baked pastries while Sage played in the pretend kitchen set up in the corner. Oreos crumbled on top of a cinnamon roll… Yes please!

Then Steve, Sage and I went to climb up Helgafell, the volcano next to Eldfell. It has more lose gravel and scrambling to get to the top, but did give good views of the airport and other side of the island. Sage fell asleep on the way down.

As an aside, we were very surprised to find near the parking for Helgafell four more soccer fields full of kids and their parents. I don’t really understand the volume of kids soccer that seems to be going on in this town right now. I know they’re coming from Iceland, but it still seems like the numbers don’t add up.

Afterwards we went back downtown to the playground that Sage loves and met Melissa and Jason and Jack there.

We took them out to the puffin viewing hut and were surprised to find the puffins all had left their holes and were swimming and flying around. Sage said “oh no, puffins gone”. She is saying so much more each day.

From there we went to another viewpoint along the road, then back into town to another playground, the one with the giant trampoline bubble.

Jason and Melissa and Jack has to go back to their boat so we said goodbye and walked down the street to have dinner at Gott. We were here with Brian and Sheryl. It was so good, had such a great setup for kids, and was recommended a few times – we decided to go back. What a delicious dinner. We all had fish, Sage the kids baked fish, Steve the seafood au gratin and me the fish of the day. Sage ate so much fish and vegetables and all of her ketchup. Still we weren’t surprised when she wanted our dessert too.

After dinner we drove back to the campground and set up for the night.

We put Sage to sleep and since it was so clear and warm-ish out, we set up the table and chairs outside, ate cheese and bread, played (more accurately, lost) a few games of codenames duet, and chatted about what a great day it has been.

Tomorrow we take the car ferry back to the main land and visit the Halliburtons in Reykjavik again.