Hofn is a small seaside fishing town on the eastern part of southern Iceland. It is very close to Vatnajokull National Park - Vatnajokull is Iceland's largest glacier (there are 3 or 4 of them on the island) and is Europe's largest ice cap. You never really get to see the glacier itself as it's really high up (hundreds of meters thick ice) but there are many "ice falls" that are visible all over, and you can take excursions onto. The ice fall is like a frozen waterfall. As snow falls on the glacier and is compacted into ice, it is constantly pushing out the fringe ice - like a waterfall from a stream fed lake. Just in slow motion. The ice is constantly moving, slowly, so if I were to go back a month from now, it might look a little different. Because of this, the tour companies who take you on excursions there are constantly monitoring the sites, changing the areas they go to as needed. But more on this later...
One of the things Hofn is most known for is langoustine (what they call lobster) - it is the langoustine capital of Iceland. Most restaurants offer it - from pan fried, to tempura, to sandwiches, to pizza of all things. Personally, you couldn't get me to spend money (a lot of it) on a langoustine pizza, but I definitely saw a lot of other tourists doing so. We were actually just a few days late for their annual Lobster Festival which is usually held at teh end of June. Most of the langoustine you see in restaurants was supposedly caught either that morning or teh day before and most restaurants purchase them directly from fishing boats.
But I'm getting ahead of myself... first we have another couple hours drive from Vik to Hofn, which, predictably, was beautiful.
In some sections, there were tons of these purple wildflowers.
About mid-way between Vik and Hofn is Skaftafell National park. This is where you go to do the glacier walks, and there is a very famous jokulsarlon - glacier lagoon. We took pictures of it from the road, but as you'll see, it became quite overcast by that time. Several days later we went again when the weather was gorgeous.
A jokulsarlon is when the ice fall breaks off at the edge and icebergs melt into a glacial lagoon fed by glacial melt water. The lagoon typically feeds a stream or river which outlets to the ocean. Iceland has a lot of glacial lagoons because most of the glaciers are situated on top of volcanoes and the geothermal activity melts the glacier from below.
You can also see several other ice falls from teh road
Once we got to the Hofn area and settled into our hotel, we went out to dinner to get some langoustine! The first restaurant I wanted to try is Pakkhus who supposedly specializes in langoustine and is very popular with locals.
It is across the street from the water. This is supposedly the fishing boat they get their langoustine from (it's directly across from teh restaurant):
We got there probably around 7:30 or so and hit a long line of people waiting. When we got to the desk, the host gave what seemed to be a speech he gives 300 times a day, that they were completely full, don't take reservations, and that they typically get space around 9PM. Also, this is a daily occurrence and he guaranteed the exact same situation for tomorrow or the next day or the day after that. So we left and went back to the hotel to relax for a bit. We returned around 8:30 (we figured we'd just wait around outside) but they had gotten some space in their bar area downstairs for us to wait so he gave us a beeper. We wound up being seated about 15 minutes after that - slightly ahead of schedule.
The space is an old warehouse space, converted to a restaurant. It's a factory - a big space with lots of tables (the host originally told us they do over 300 covers per night) with prices to match... some menu photos:
Keep in mind that it's about 135 Krona per US$, so each dish of langoustine costs about $60!!!
After collecting our breath getting over the sticker shock, we got:
Smoked lamb carpaccio and cured beef served over some smoking hickory wood. More chillies! Very tasty.
Cold smoked rainbow trout (do they mean char?) and hot smoked mackerel. Also very tasty.
Langoustine pan. This is where the meal goes south. These were probably the most overcooked langoustine I've ever had. So sad, and at that cost, rather infuriating. They were so poorly cooked that you almost lost the delicate sweetness that langoustines are prized for.
Horse tenderloin with bernaise sauce (bernaise seems to be very popular in Iceland - it was everywhere). I think my wife stopped laughing at my "don't get saucy with me Bernaise" joke around the third time. It was sitting in a pool of demi-glace which made me wonder about the need for the bernaise.
This was my first horse experience (on a plate) - I enjoyed it - very lean and tender, although we had it a few days later and I thought that one had better flavor.
