Tuesday, August 25- A Weird Museum and Whale-Watching

Ron saw a listing for the Iceland Phallological Museum in one of our brochures and really wanted to make a visit there.  The Museum is mostly exhibits of preserved male members of many species of animal (and one human!) and included copies of letters from several men promising to donate their organs to the Museum after death. 

No, thanks, I'm not hungry right now.



This one belonged to a killer whale.

After lunch we thought about what to do next and realized that we still wanted to do a whale-watching tour and the weather prediction (to the extent it could be trusted) looked good for the evening.  We booked a trip starting at 5 PM, and I then went for a swim while Ron relaxed.

It was a wonderful evening.  We saw beautiful views of the Reykjavik harbor as we left. 

I had hoped to see puffins, and they were all over.  We knew from our experiences in Alaska that whale-watching is partly luck.  On this trip we saw a few Minke whales; no dramatic full-head breaches of the surface, but a good number of whales were out there and at least allowed us some good pictures of their flukes (tails) as the descended under the water again.  We also saw white-beaked dolphins, which I’d never seen before, and enjoyed the views of the harbor and the volcanoes as we came back into port.  It  was a perfect ending to our trip.

Ron caught this one in mid-spray.

Well, the tail of a whale is better than no whale at all.

A puffin!  I saw a puffin!

Another boat in the area.  The flock of birds is a good sign of whales in the area.

Reykjavik harbor.



Ron keeps an eye out for Moby Dick.