Art galleries in Akureyi

Art galleries in Akureyi, supper at Strikkid, live music  

I wandered through the town up to the old part to see the town museum. This had an interesting recreation of the town over the last 100 years. It is amusing to see the different scale of things in Iceland; Akureyi been a municipality when it had 249 citizens, now it has a pop of 15 000, it acquired a secondary school in 1904. It also has a university with 1500 students. There was also a rather worthy exhibition of the first female presidents' dresses. I then visited the house of the poet Nonni, a Victorian Icelandic house. 

I had a late lunch at cafe Blaa Kanan, it was full of tourists because a vast cruise ship and docked a few hours discharging 3000 visitors into the town. I wandered through the summer art festival which was in local galleries. The Modern Art gallery had an exhibition about town architecture and I saw examples of recent work including one on the university and the cafe in public garden here. I also saw an exhibition called the “Conspiracy of Pleasure” which seemed to be mainly about sexual pleasures, with many phalluses in different forms. I visited a couple of art galleries, in one the artist had work that looked like a solid snowflake from that she called a mandala.

I visited Lystigardurinn, the world’s most northerly public garden. The garden is at the top of the hill and faces south. It has small trees and lovely flowerbeds with clematis, aquilegia and other plants. There were many tourists there noting the plants that could be grown here. It also had a lovely café with a large new window full of light. In the evening I had an excellent fish supper at a posh restaurant called Strikid which has roof top views of the fjord. I finished the evening listening to a popular Icelandic rock band (3 guitars, 2 keyboards, drummer, and vocalist) play. Their show comprised many jokes in Icelandic so I missed a lot of the humour and left after the first set. I had shared a table with two middle aged women (nurse and head teacher) who were friends and had come for the band. They were interested in my Icelandic travels. 

Pacing myself for the long drive to Reykjavik tomorrow. 

Good: the garden
Bad the Icelandic comedian (jokes incomprehensible)
Surprising: the art festival
Hotel Icelandair Akureyi