Today was an amazing day - went whale watching and caught cod which we ate at a fish barbecue later at the whaling centre.

We had been debating whether we had time to do anything before whale watching - swimming or the aviation museum were considered before being abandoned - there wasn't enough time as we had to leave Akureyri by midday to get to the boat in time so we had a little stroll through the town instead and did a little shopping.

We got to the whale watching centre a couple of minutes late but soon got into the heavy-duty 66 Degrees North exposure suits. We just made it to the boat in time and were off sharpish! It wasn't that cold, with a deep blue sky and very calm seas. They gave us a quick briefing and it wasn't long before we saw our first whale! It was in the distance, and the first we saw was the spout of water that gave him away! We got nearer slowly and saw there were three of them - the skipper indicated their location using the boat as a clock, with the bows as 12, the stern as 6, etc. They were truly majestic and moved smoothly and slowly - a pattern to their movements became clear - they would move on the surface a little while refilling their lungs etc, evacuating their spouts, then curving their backs in preparation for sounding to the sea bed, some 150m below - their fluke would disappear last, in the well-known whale-tail shape, before diving to the depths. Behind them they left a smooth oval-shaped patch of water, created by their tails - they would surface about 5 minutes later and would then repeat. We tracked two groups, one of three whales and one of four - they were all humpbacks, and very beautiful. After the whale watching we all did a bit of fishing! Lola and I caught one cod each, and Mary-Ann caught two! Back at the centre we had them barbecued - Lola and I liked it but Mary-Ann was not too keen!