Iceland
Djúpivogur
Thirty-four polished granite eggs line a fishing harbour, one for each local bird species.
Thirty-four granite eggs sit along the harbour, each a different size, each standing for a bird that nests in these fjords. Djúpivogur is a fishing village where art interrupts the everyday with quiet persistence — the harbour is workplace and gallery at once.
Eggin í Gleðivík — 'The Eggs of Merry Bay' — is Sigurður Guðmundsson's installation of thirty-four polished granite eggs, each carved to the proportions of a different local breeding bird, from snow bunting to white-tailed eagle. The village behind them is one of Iceland's oldest trading posts, with Danish commercial history reaching back to 1589, and the renovated 18th-century Langabúð warehouse on the harbour now holds a cultural centre and café. Across the water rises Búlandstindur, a mountain of near-perfect pyramidal geometry that changes from slate to silver with the cloud. Djúpivogur — a 'slow city' by charter and temperament — makes the natural base for the quieter Eastfjords coast and the bird island of Papey offshore.
Couple
Walk the harbour egg by egg, guessing each bird, then dine in the old warehouse with fjord views — gentle, cultured romance at Iceland's quieter edge.
Solo
Sketch the eggs, browse the Langabúð and absorb the Eastfjords' particular quiet — the town rewards the unhurried.
Friends
The eggs give a focal point, the harbour kitchens serve fresh fish, and the compact charm makes an easy, rewarding stop on an Eastfjords circuit.
- Eggin í Gleðivík lines the harbour with thirty-four granite eggs — one for every local nesting bird.
- Each egg is carved to true proportion by the artist Sigurður Guðmundsson.
- The village has been a trading post since 1589, its old warehouse now café and cultural centre.
- Búlandstindur's pyramidal profile rises across the fjord from the harbour wall.
At Langabúð, choose homemade soup or bread topped with salmon or smoked lamb inside the town’s 1790 trading house.
Follow it with coffee and one of the café’s homemade cakes before returning to the slow harbour circuit.
Matjiesfontein
South Africa
A Victorian railway village keeps its red postbox, pub piano and desert silence.
Orchha
India
Cenotaphs glowing honey-gold over the Betwa while vultures roost on their medieval spires.
Shimoni
Kenya
Slave caves burrow beneath a fishing village where dolphins breach in the channel beyond.
Mwanza
Tanzania
Granite boulders the size of cathedrals balance over Lake Victoria's shore.
Grjótagjá
Iceland
A steaming, sapphire-blue thermal pool hidden inside a deep, jagged lava fissure.
Grímsey Island
Iceland
A wind-battered island where you step across the Arctic Circle among a million nesting seabirds.
Silfra Fissure
Iceland
Snorkelling in liquid crystal through a tectonic rift between the American and Eurasian plates.
Fjaðrárgljúfur
Iceland
A serpentine canyon with walls of moss-covered palagonite carved by ancient glacial meltwater.