Day 7: Black Church, Seal Beach, Borgarnes, and another waterfall.

I woke shortly after 7 and found that the sun was finally shining brightly!  I checked to make sure that H was still sleeping and hopped in the car to head to the Black Church for photos.  Along the way, I used a pull-out to take a photo of the coastline where our house is.  You can't really see it but it's on the flatlands between the water and the glacier.

The Black Church is just a few minutes east of our place.  The structure itself is just under 200 years old, and it's recently been restored to what it originally looked like.  It's still an active worship space, though the signage indicates that it was built with no support from the church at all.  How very passive-aggressive of the builders

Then, back home to have a quick breakfast with the group and leave for our adventures.  Yesterday we headed west, so today, we headed east. The kids were all grumpy that we couldn't just stay at home all day, but with the promise of a playground, we managed to get them into the cars. Our first stop was back to the Black Church, where the kids played on their tablets while the grown-ups visited the church.  

Our next stop was Ytri Tunga, a rocky beach frequented by seals.  We got there right at low tide, where the rocks were plentiful and much fun was had.  I thought we'd spend maybe 15 minutes at the site, but we were there for over an hour.  The kids climbed all over the rocks, squealing at each other and playing hide-and-seek games.  As we were walking back to the car, we saw a sign that said asked visitors to please be quiet.  Oops.

From Ytri Tunga, we drove over an hour to Borgarnes, the closest mid-sized town around.  We had a yummy lunch (lots of much-needed veggies!), and then went to the Settlement Exhibition, a site that had two audio-guided tours - one was a history of the first 60 years of the human settlements on Iceland, and the other an accounting of the Egil Saga, one of the most important sagas in Icelandic history.  It was a little creepy.

After that, we gassed up the cars and headed back home via the north road, stopping for one final waterfall at Kirkjufellsfossar.  It was cold and breezy, but I got a chance to try out my new neutral-density filters for lovely long-exposure shots.

From there, it was a short 22 minutes back to the AirBNB where heated up dinner, had one last meal in this lovely place, and sent the kids to bed.  Then, CC, CE, and I had a sauna and a hot-tub, and then chilled out in the living room talking about future plans.