Into the Land of Fire and Ice: Road Trip up North Part 2

Ok here goes part 2. Monday we woke up to Emily's alarm saying "it's 7:00 time to wake up, it's 7:00 time to wake up" which we ignored and went back to sleep till about 8. Finally I got up and went downstairs (I was sleeping in the loft) and started making breakfast and sandwiches for later. It was not too cold out this morning but it was snowing and it looked so beautiful. It felt like Christmas time :). Eventually everyone got up and we ate, cleaned the cabin a bit, and took pictures outside. We headed out around 9am. Our next destination was Sauðárkrókur, the second largest town in northern Iceland with a population of 2635 (and on the way to our final destination Akureyri) except we decided it really wasn´t all that great. As Riitta said "it's ugly, let's not stop."We did however stop at a beach in the town which was nice. It was a black sand beach and it was snowing again at this point. We continued on our way till we spotted a few horses along the edge of their fence. We had been waiting till we saw horses along the road and only a few of them so we would be able to feed all of them bread and pet them. We spent a few minutes here and I was so happy, I would have stayed longer but my hands were freezing!

We continued on our way toward Akureyri constantly surrounded by huge mountains. I was in awe the whole time, it was absolutely gorgeous! Here is a quick video of our drive hah.

We finally got to Akureyri and went to a café that Riitta knew. We all got coffees or cappuccinos and Riitta and Erin got really yummy looking spinach pies. We then headed to the see the church in Akureyri, Akureyrarkirkja, which is designed by the man who did the church in Reykjavik, Hallgrímskirkja. We couldn´t go inside since there was something going on, but we climbed the many stairs to the top and took pictures and got to see the town from a higher view.
Then we went to get ice cream at Brynja, supposedly the best ice cream in Iceland. I´ve only been to one other place (In Reykjavik), but Brynja was definitely the better ice cream.

Jake, Me, and Emily enjoying ice cream

Next we decided to see Goðafoss, one of the most powerfull waterfalls in Europe. Riitta was so excited to go see it because she worked at it during the summer and had never seen it during the winter. She kept calling it "my waterfall." She however forgot to mention that you have to drive over a mountain to get there. For a little bit of the way it was white out conditions and it was a little scary, but we made it through fine. The waterfall was really cool to see, but sooo windy. We drove over to one side and took pictures and then Riitta said the other side is a better viewpoint so we drove over there but you had to walk to get to the waterfall. It was probably the windiest I have ever experienced so it was really cold but worth it. We basically walked really fast over there, took a few pictures, then ran back to the car. After this we headed back toward Reykjavik and did pretty much the same route we had already taken so we had much fewer photo stops.