the road to akureyri

We stayed last night in a hotel in Varmaland. Every hotel has its quirks. This one had a tiny bathroom with no shower stall, just a floor drain and curtain. Water gets everywhere. But the hotel restaurant was swank: a fourth-floor restaurant with floor-to-ceiling windows giving a view of the surrounding countryside. Whipped butter for the bread rolls was placed artfully atop black volcanic rocks.

On a less aesthetic note, at a gas station on the ride north, F bought a tin of hakarl (fermented shark) to pass around. It was awful. Gross. Disastrous. After we each ate a piece, F ate a piece himself, said "This is terrible," and threw the remainder of the tin in the trash. He told us (after we ate, naturally) that hakarl has been voted as the world's worst food. He also explained the origin of the dish. Fresh shark meat is poisonous. Back in the day, sharks were hunted for their livers, which were sold for use as fuel; the rest of the shark was thrown out. In a time of famine, a starving man dug up a weeks-old buried shark carcass and ate it. He didn't die, and people were like "oh hey we can use this" and that's how hakarl became a thing.

It was a travel & chill day. We spent the morning driving north to the town of Akureyri (another good dragon name; this one has protag vibes). We had a food cart lunch featuring the famous Icelandic hot dog, and then we had a free afternoon. Perfect weather for a walk, blue skies and breezy. We rambled around tourist lane and then visited the botanical gardens - not the fanciest, but it was good to walk after being cooped up in the van all morning.

The quirks of our Akureyri hotel: a real physical room key on a leather keychain, and a tiny elevator with a tinier weight limit. Four people get on and it starts yelling OVERLOAD and won't budge until someone gets off. But the bathrooms have shower stalls! I call that a win.