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Sandholt bakery is such a classy place for a lovely breakfast, and an ideal start to our last full day in Iceland. A leisurely morning, including a walk past, but not go into, the Punk Museum, since Karen was getting ready to go horse riding in the afternoon. She had a lovely time with Viking Horses tour, riding a lovely Icelandic horse on a nice easy hack.

If Pip Blom was my nice surprise of a band better than I expected, Penelope Isles were my ‘top find’ of the festival and I’m on the way to becoming a super fan! ‘The Current’, a radio station from Minneapolis, ran series of short broadcasts from Hressingarskálinn so I got there in good time to get to the front while Karen was away horse riding. Pip Blom were first up for a second dose in 14 hours, and they were good again of course. Not so enamoured with next act Girl In Red from Norway. Meh! Then Penelope Isles from Isle of Man via Brighton came on and blew me away with only 3 songs … but belters. Love em. New favourite band. In fact I changed the planned evening itinerary to make sure we caught them again at the Art Museum later!

On the way back to meet Karen, where else but in The Drunk Rabbit, I killed some time by dropping into Landsbankinn where Una Schram and then Auður played short sets of their ‘popular in Iceland’ pop … nothing special but cute! After Drunk Rabbit we just had to go back to Italia for more of the best pizza in Iceland, or anywhere really. Perfect, and got us ready for a second dose of Penelope Isles within 5 hours! And they were great again, so good I’m going to catch them on tour in Newcastle soon.

After that I had planned to catch Olof Arnalds at Iðnó then John Grant at Fríkirkjan, but … we were both so tired, Karen particularly, we couldn’t muster up the energy to walk past The Drunk Rabbit. So there we stayed until bedtime before our 3:45am alarm for our 7:30am flight! A tiring journey back but with happy memories of a great trip.

Attended by George & Karen – playlist with multiple relevant videos below!