Day 11: Kirkjubol to Isafjordur

We only had about 20 km left before reaching our final West Fjord destination. When you factor in the 6km gravel detour to get out of our guest house/campground, it may have been silly not to just push though to the end yesterday. Perhaps stopping early had something to do with the Lonely Planet's description of the steep mountains around Isafjordur as the "Alps of Iceland." But on the 7th day, God made tunnels! Glorious tunnels. Just a short way up the mountain, we were greeted by not-your-ordinary-tunnel. We were inside a mountain for 6km and actually had to take a right turn to stay on route as though we were in District 13 of Panem. We never pedaled so hard as in a 6 km death trap in one of the most geologically active places on Earth - but it was WAY better than going over the mountain :)

Reaching the "surprisingly cosmopolitan" Isafjordur at 10am gave us plenty of time to:
*finish off the food we've been lugging around now that we're back to civilization.
*stroll through the old town - the newest house on one street was built in 1898. If only we could have removed the cars we would have thought we'd traveled back in time.
*actually zip off the legs of our stylish camping pants on what must have been the hottest day of the year in Isafjordur (to cap off a four day streak of blue skies in the West Fjords - just as we were ready to dub Iceland Rainland). We even waited in line for ice cream.
*plop down in three Kaffi Hus's to blog, plan, try local beer, compare coffees, and escape the heat!
*scope out a restaurant we read and heard great things about. We asked about a menu/what fish they serve but the nice girl couldn't tell us much - her dad wasn't back with the catch yet! We came back for a buffet feast of grilled local plaice, cod, catfish, halibut, green line halibut, monkfish...each pan cooked a little differently. They even cooked some fish separately, sans gluten. We love Isafjordur!