Roy Sigurd Karlsbakks blogg

After a week of walking 1-3 hours every day around with a camera, some extra lenses, a laptop, some power supplies, a book or two and perhaps some more on my back, my backpack feels lighter and walking a couple of hours, carrying it, doesn’t feel too bad. I take that as a good sign 🙂 Having walked around in Reykjavík for a day, I thought perhaps I should look further, so I got on a bus (number 1) to Kópavogur and got off at Tónlistarhús Kópavogs (Literally Kópavogur music house, the only building built especially with a concert hall in mind, and also houses Kópavogur music school – thanks, Hildigunnur) and looked around. It seems to me Kópavogur is little more than a suburb of Reykjavík. Kópmiðbær, the center of Kópavogur, is perhaps the size of a country mall. Two bakeries, one or two hairdressers, the obligatory country pub for the local thirsty ones, a church and that was about it. The church was actually quite nice, though. I headed north (the sun’s my compass) in the direction of Perlan. Whoever listed Kópavogur as a city in wikipedia, I don’t know, but I changed it to municipality.I found my way down to the shore of the cove of Fossvogur (vogur meaning cove). There was an old information sign near the shore, but as it was in Icelandic only so I didn’t understand much. If someone feels like translating some of it, see here for original picture (there’s a Canon raw file there as well). A little tip to anyone that might want to purchase lava stone from a souvenir shop – I’d recommend a walk or a bus ride to Fossvogur or somewhere else to pick your own. Walking around the cove led me to the foot of the hill on top of which Perlan sits. At the foot was a gate and a sign saying Kirkjugarðurinn er helegur reitur, probably meaning graveyard it’s blessed plus some words about not being noisy and showing respect. This graveyard was also strange. Not as chaotic as the one I walked through on day one, but still nice. It seems to have a core that is way older than the surrounding graveyard, it also has lots of trees and lots of birds live there. Today they were feasting on berries and they were not quiet, making the graveyard the liveliest ones I’ve ever seen – nice 🙂 Continuing though, passing the graves of the soldiers that fell during world war two, I came to a new (and not finished) park area, with a small pond with a nice bridge over and freshly planted trees of sorts. See the gallery below for more pictures. There were also enormous amounts of goose shit, but I didn’t see any geese, so they may perhaps have chosen sanity and fled south to Islay or something (enormous amounts Barnacle Geese spend the winters at the north of Islay, Scotland – there are even people going to Islay to watch them, and not alone to taste (read drink) whisky). Eventually I came to Perlan where I still am, having had a small meal and some rest. Now, not finding any electrical outlets, my battery is running low, so I guess I’ll leave and try to get into town instead of sitting here.

On my way down into miðbær, a cyclist came by with studded tires – I wonder if he may have used them as all-year-tires, but then, even here, that’s not really necessary, nor is it a good idea.

Back at Prikið again, waiting for today’s offer #2, a Dion pepper steak of sorts. After 45 minutes, I asked the guy in the bar if he had slaughtered the cow yet, and he gave me a beer for free and apologized a lot. Today’s offer wasn’t too bad, were it not for the leatherish quality of the meat, so I guess it’s better to stick with simpler stuff here. As always, the service in this places certainly varies, but I still find it a nice place 🙂

Weather forecast for today from yr.no wasn’t too bad, but it seems the rest of my vacation here might be rainy.