Following on from our unexpected drinking session in Ísafjörður and sail away from that port in the evening, we found ourselves already at anchor in the last of the Icelandic ports we’d never visited before, Grundarfjörður, the next morning. As I’ve already mentioned, we would be taking an organised tour while at this port in Iceland but if you’re not the sort that takes trips or you’re thinking of cruising to Iceland with Princess Cruises and want to see what sort of things might distract you on the ship while everyone else is having their breath taken away by the landscapes, here’s the sort of things the ship laid on back in July, 2022.

The thing that the port of Grundarfjörður is probably most famous for is its nearby mountain, Kirkjufell. Its distinctive shape makes it one of the most photographed mountains in Iceland, but you’ll have to search online for pictures of Kirkjufell if you’re not familiar with it because, like the day before, some low cloud had accompanied our cruise ship around the Icelandic coastline and hidden the top from view. We hoped that by the time we returned to the ship later in the day we’d have better conditions for some better photographs.

Nevertheless, the views from the cruise ship were still lovely. Iceland looks incredible no matter what the weather is like.

We’d had to set our alarm for not long after six in the morning because of the duration of our cruise excursion. Breakfast done, we had a little time in our room and on our balcony, looking at the tender boats operating, before we shot off to meet up with our group for the day.

In the next post in this Sky Princess Norway and Iceland cruise travelogue series we’ll make the first stop of our day’s tour from Grundarfjörður when we visit the black sand beach at Djúpalónssandur.

Our first stop of the day was at Djúpalónssandur, famous for its black sand beach. Black sand is, of course, a shorter way of saying “little bits of volcanic rock spit out from the Earth’s core and deposited by the water” and upon exiting the bus and glancing roughly northwards from the car park above the beach we could see the source of all that volcanic rock. This was Snæfellsjökull, a 700,000-year-old, glacier-topped volcano, last active in the early parts of the first millennium. Not only gorgeous to look at, but also immortalised in the Jules Verne story Journey to the Centre of the Earth as the entrance towards the Earth’s centre.

We had a bit of a wait around the car park because there were toilets there and we were on a cruise ship excursion. Toilets are like Venus Flytraps for cruise ship tourists. They can’t help themselves. They’re compelled to venture inside the sticky surface and remain trapped in there for far longer than you’d think necessary before emerging outside somehow desperate for something with lots of caffeine in it so they can flush their body with more diuretic and repeat the process over and over again.

Eventually, though, our guide led us down the winding, occasionally steep, rocky, grassy, and always pretty Nautastígur path towards the beach.

Djúpalónssandur has a few points of interest, one of those being on the path down to the black sand. A natural hole had formed in one of the walls of dark rock and provided a lovely view back towards the volcano dominating the Snæfellsnes Peninsula skyline. The name of this rock formation is Gatklettur in case you’re wondering whether it had one. Of course it had one.

At the bottom of the path a small lagoon had formed and offered photographers a nice place for reflection. The beach had several lagoons and it’s from them that the name Djúpalónssandur derives and it also explains the name of the path, which translates to Path of the Bulls, and refers to the act of walking cattle down to the lagoon to drink. Drinking the water yourself is not recommended. Fresh water may sit on the surface but it’s by no means guaranteed that you won’t simply get a mouthful of Icelandic sea water instead. I didn’t test this to find out, but if you’re feeling adventurous then fine, go ahead.

Djúpalónssandur’s probably most famous attraction, if you want to call it that, is the rusted remnants of the steam-powered fishing trawler Epine GY7. This British vessel was caught in a blizzard in 1948 and wrecked. Locals managed to get a line to the boat and saved four while one other swam ashore in the freezing conditions and survived, but fourteen lost their lives.

We had some free time to look around and it had been my intention to walk down to the shoreline as many others were doing, but to be honest here, it was all a bit tiring and we didn’t really have enough time to fully explore and do the place complete justice. One thing about the black sand on Djúpalónssandur Black Sand Beach is it’s incredibly giving. That compactness you might find with finer sand isn’t there and the effect is more like putting your hand in a box of marbles rather than laying your hand on dirt. After traipsing across the surface for a few minutes and realising you’re only three metres away from where you started (a slight exaggeration) you might also feel inclined to turn around and head back onto more solid ground.

There is far more to see at Djúpalónssandur than shown here. Cruise excursions, like cruises themselves, are tasters for places, often never quite satisfying enough in their own rights, but rather encouraging you to come back for more if you like what you see. If you like lagoons and volcanic landscapes and morbid history and looking at tall rock formations and thinking “I bet the locals claim that’s a troll turned to stone when the sun hit it” (it will be) then it’s definitely worth a visit if you’re on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.

In the next part of this cruise travelogue series we’ll continue our drive around the Snæfellsnes Peninsula and make a photo stop near the Malarrif Lighthouse.

Malarrif Lighthouse is twenty metres high and was built in 1946 or 1947 (records differ), replacing an earlier construction on the site that had been erected in 1917. At the time this part of Iceland was some of the most remote farmland in the country and the lighthouse was a necessary guide for fishermen in and around the rocky coastline. If you’ve read the previous post about the beach you’ll know just how dangerous the waters are.

The striking thing about Malarrif Lighthouse for me was its rocketship design. The flared support fins and tapering design just brought visions of pulp comics from the middle of the twentieth century to the fore. Could you see Buck Rogers piloting this thing?

Housing for a lighthouse keeper and an information centre were also in the area, but the lighthouse wasn’t the only thing to rise up out of the ground and dominate the view. A large radio antenna obviously facilitated keeping in touch with the wider world.

In the distance we could also see Lóndrangar, a pair of volcanic plugs of basalt that could almost be mistaken for the ruins of some great abbey. In fact, they were part of a crater rim from an old eruption in Iceland. If you picture these two being part of a larger circle of rock cooled down from an explosion, then over time the softer soil and other parts of the rim eroding naturally and falling into the sea, you’ll get some sense of the force of nature involved in their formation.

And, of course, you can’t really be anywhere on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula without the looming sight of the Snæfellsjökull volcano somewhere.

If you were on the peninsula and touring Iceland on your own then this is actually a worthwhile place to stop, check out the information, check the lighthouse over more closely, and wander along to the Lóndrangar rock pillars, but on a cruise excursion, as mentioned, there wasn’t time to do anything other than use the toilets. We were told we wouldn’t get another chance to use toilets after this on the day’s tour so despite our occasional moaning about the frequency of loo stops we decided it would be prudent to make use of them too. A long wait in line commenced because it appeared that one of the two unisex cubicles was permanently occupied; at least until I got to the front of the queue and spotted that the door was clearly showing it was vacant and nobody had thought to check. People, eh?

In the next post in this 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland cruise travelogue series we’ll make another short photo stop along the Snæfellsnes Peninsula at the old fishing village of Hellnar.

Whilst decidedly quieter these days, Hellnar was once a fairly thriving fishing village surrounded by agricultural farms. Little of that industrial history really remained to be seen, and one of the main draws to this location now is the prominent rock cliff jutting out to sea with its deep cave. This was Valasnös.

We were given not quite enough time to do very much at all. A small café was reachable down some steps on the cliff, but whether anyone would have had enough time to order anything and consume it was debatable and we didn’t see anyone try. We wandered along the cliff and back for the most part but I determined we still had enough time for me to route-march up the road to get close enough to the village’s church for a few photos. The volcanic mountain forming the church’s backdrop was Stapafell, and turning slightly around gave another fine view of the glacier-topped Snæfellsjökull that dominated the landscape of the entire peninsula.

As photo stops go, it was nice enough, but as is often the case when you’re on a cruise ship excursion there wasn’t enough time to do it justice and see what else there was on offer. If you were travelling on your own then it’s likely that the cave and the church and a little more wandering around the bay and cliff could occupy a decent chunk of time, though.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll make the final stop of the tour at the somewhat busier village of Arnarstapi for a longer walk with more points of interest to see.

Having just come from another village, Hellnar, we’d anticipated something similar in size but Arnarstapi was a lot larger, containing more buildings, and a lot more tourists. In the summer months it’s tourism that thrives here now because of the landscape, although in the past Arnarstapi was an important fishing port and was run by first Norway then Denmark for their own interests. The industrial revolution saw investment in the countryside areas of Iceland dwindle and the village shrunk in size and importance.

If you’re visiting Arnarstapi then it’s the coastal walk you’ll want to be taking, enjoying the sights and some of the natural wonders on view. If you like rock formations then you are going to find some fine ones. There is also an extensive lava field here, ejected from the dominating form of the Snæfellsjökull volcano and glacier on the peninsula, but our tour stuck to the coastline.

And, of course, with this being Iceland, you’re never short of stunning views to the landscape not just where you’re standing but for miles around. We got lucky on our visit that it was bright and, for us, warm. In fact, we were walking around in t-shirts on the rocky cliffs, although we were in the minority.

The basalt columns and cliffs around Arnarstapi are home to lots of birdlife. Noisy birdlife, when we were there. You can probably expect to see kittiwakes, gulls, and Arctic terns, depending on the time of year you visit.

There are a few stand-out natural rock formations among all the others. The first of those was a stone bridge over an eroded section, across which many people were walking and posing for photos. Our guide kept us moving past it, no doubt a little concerned that accidents upon it would reflect badly on the tour as a whole.

Further along the coastal walk at Arnarstapi was the more impressive and more photographed Gatklettur, a stone arch more akin to those you might find at Lulworth Cove or Cabo San Lucas (and probably others, but those are the ones we’ve seen so far).

As our circular walk around the Arnarstapi coastline came to an end and we approached the parking lot for our bus we came upon the last landmark. The sculpture of stones on a slight rise represented Bárður Snæfellsás, a half-man, half-ogre who lived in this part of Iceland in the ninth century according to a fourteenth century saga.

Absolutely beautiful landscape views is the staple of any visit to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, and Arnarstapi did not disappoint, but a cruise excursion could only give the merest highlights of all there is to see. Furthermore, because of the number of people on the tour and the narrow, uneven walk along the coastline it wasn’t always possible to hear the guide explaining some aspect of the saga histories or the wildlife or the formations. Not helped when I wander off to snap some photos, either. A visit to Arnarstapi is definitely recommended if you’re visiting Iceland.

In the next part of this 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland cruise travelogue series we’ll return to Grundarfjörður ahead of our departure overnight to Iceland’s capital, the last port of call on this cruise.

At the conclusion of this tour we were brought back to Grundarfjörður, and it had been our intention, because we had the time for it, to have a walk into town and across to Kirkjufell for some photos of what is often claimed to be Iceland’s most photographed mountain thanks in no small part to it featuring in some fantasy programme we never got the chance to see when it was first released, then got put off by everyone claiming it was excellent, then got put off more by everyone claiming the ending was terrible, and so decided to never watch.

However, regular readers of these travel posts – and counting me, that’s one of us – will know that my wife has on occasion injured herself either on her hip or knee or ankle, often causing her to fall or twist something even more. Basically, one of her legs has been trying to kill her for years and we keep putting off taking her to see a priest to get the demon inside exorcised. She hadn’t fallen on this day’s tour, but some of the walking had been on very uneven ground (or up uneven rock steps in the case of the first stop of the day at Djúpalónssandur Black Sand Beach) and it had aggravated existing problems.

“You can go off on your own,” she said.

“I could,” I agreed, “but the trolls might get me. Can’t go without my wingman. Wingwoman.”

“Are you calling me an old bat?”

It’s not like there won’t be opportunities to return to the country in the future. Including this cruise, this was our third time in Iceland, it’s our favourite country in Europe, and it won’t take much to get us back there. So I decided to simply hop back on board Sky Princess and enjoy some of the views of the spectacular landscapes in this part of the world from our balcony and the top deck of the ship before we sailed away in the evening.

The waterfall you can see in the photo below is Grundarfoss, one of Iceland’s tallest waterfalls with a drop of seventy metres. We were quite some distance away on the ship but it was still an impressive sight.

The evening aboard the cruise ship was much like most others. We had a few pre-dinner drinks first alone, then with our friends on the cruise, and we all joined together to not only take part in the trivia but win it too. One day Princess Cruises might offer up decent prizes, but not on this day.

And to finish off, some photos of the dinner on Sky Princess in the main dining room, because you wouldn’t believe how much some people like to see pictures of it. Food was of a great quality and we had a wonderful table for the last of the time in port in Grundarfjörður.

While I didn’t take any photos of any drinks I can assure you that they were nevertheless consumed.

In the next post in this 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland cruise series we’ll arrive at the final port in Iceland and the country’s capital, Reykjavík. With this being our third time to the city we wouldn’t be going on any excursions but we ended up finding some awesome pieces of public art and finally visiting the punk museum.