Whale Watching, Vomit & The Saga Museum

Our second day in Iceland, we hadn't got anything booked, my idea was that if the weather was good we would go whale watching but if not we would check out the museums. It wasn't raining but it was a bit cold so we decided to walk down to the old harbour and decide from there.

That in itself was a bit of an adventure, we walked along the sea front, stopped at the Sun Voyager Monument along the way. As you can se the clouds looked heavy so I was a bit worried about the sea conditions.

We got close to the old harbour but couldn't get through because of all the construction work going on so we went on a slight detour and had to ask a dad pushing a pram for directions (Ebi-kun noted that it was strange seeing a viking pushing a pram!) He was very helpful and pointed us in the right direction. We ended up going through the town to get there.

We finally found the whale tour offices, there are plenty of companies that run the trips. I had googled beforehand and decided to go with Eldling Whale Company, they are eco friendly and are leading the way in green tourism, they are also the oldest whale watching company that operates out of Reykjavik. 

Now, they did tell us that the sea was going to be rough and the do give you free sea sickness tablets. The guy at the ticket office said that the weather was supposed to get better by the end of the week but it's very changeable so it's anyones guess really.

One other thing this company does is that if you are unfortunately to have no animal sightings, you get a free ticket to use on another day. This is what swung our decision, if we went out and saw nothing, we could try again on the Friday. 

Truth of the matter is, you would have had to drag me on the ship a second time! So it's a good job we did see some!

By law, all kids under 13 must wear a life jacket or one of these warm flotation suits, they are also available to all other passengers. It was cold out there so we put ours on straight away. From the picture above the sea didn't look too bad but don't be fooled, I was already feeling queasy before leaving the bay!

We did see a couple of minke whales and a couple of pods of dolphins, cuteness alert! This was in between me sharing my breakfast with everyone, pretty sure that they didn't sign up for that! Needless to say, I was having enough trouble keeping my stomach in place so photos were an after thought. You can just about see the fin of a white nosed dolphin, if you look hard...

After the longest 3 hours of my life we got back on dry land, I am certainly not cut out for a sailors life! Give me a horse any day. 

We wandered around the town a bit, Ebi-kun didn't throw up on the boat but he was feeling queasy too, so we let our stomachs settle before having a late lunch.

Eating out is expensive, this meal, Ebi-kun had a burger and I had a lamb sandwich, the food was good but there was too much for us to finish, maybe we should have shared. We didn't buy drinks but the meal still cost around ¥5000.

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I'm not a big fan of lamb but this was delicious, so tender and melted in the mouth, veggies were a bit scarce, I had some pickled cabbage and a piece of lettuce!

After lunch we decided to have a look around the town and head to The Saga Museum, the city centre isn't very big and is basically full of tourist and coffee shops!

The Saga Museum was good, it wasn't as big as I expected, when you pay you can choose to leave your stuff in one of the free lockers and/or hang up your coat. I recommend doing that. Then you get given a headset and you get listen to the commentary as you walk around.

The wax work figures are very lifelike and it smells like the olden days too! There are 17 stations, each one explaining about the stories and histories of the sagas. It was interesting and not too long for the kids.

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When you have finished there is a room where you can try of traditional clothes. They had real chainmail, which was really heavy, I have no idea how they could have an epic battle wearing that! All in all it was a good couple of hours. They also have a cafe and shop.

We then wandered back home via the supermarket. One thing we noticed about the town were all these amazing murals on the side of buildings, Ebi-kun took to photographing them

But there was also a LOT of bad graffiti which is a shame because it's such a cute little city. If you are fit and healthy you can pretty much walk around the whole place.