Being 30 is rad as @$%#!: Akureyri

Ah, the capital of the north. Or east. Or the highlands. One of those. Akureyri is Iceland's second largest city,a thriving metropolis of 16,000 or so inhabitants. While maybe tiny compared to North American standards, it really did feel like we were back in the big leagues after weeks of fjord and tiny, villages chock full of empty streets and a serious lack of things said to be happening.

We fully accomplished our goal of doing pretty much as little as possible over three nights. We got in late, wandered around town a bit, but quickly realized we would exhaust our sight seeing list if we explored too thoroughly (ie, we seemed to be approaching the outer limit of things to do within fifth or twenty minutes.) We met up with a German guy, Patrick (we think, we just called him 'German friend') for a drink in a really cool cafe, then made our way back up the hill to the campsite.

The next two days were remarkably similar: we found a great coffee shop slash book store, which had great, refillable coffee, free wifi, snacks, and big fat windows for people watching. I perused a couple of traditional Icelandic stories- the saga of Njall, a full on epic of fighting families, complete with betrayal, jealousy, blood baths and redemption, all set in the eleventh century, and in areas we had made our way through -so we could say 'oh, that's where Njall's wife brandished a knife at the servant sent to butcher her sheep and steal her cheese wheel. Sweet!'

Also read the first fifty pages of Reykjavik 101, a story of a slacker, still living at home, trying to figure out a life outside of going to the bars and watching tv in the dark. Very much a sort of grungy 90s feel to it, but as it was set in Reykjavik, it felt much more pertinent to our travel. But then it began to veer into artsy melodrama, with love triangles pushing possible incest, less grunge rock and cigarette smoke and more dredging out ones feelings and self worth analysis. And it was much too lovely a city to get mired down with to decade old existentialism.