The hike is supposed to be 90 minutes round trip. The information placard says the hike is easy and recommended for children. I suspect Faroese children must be robust and immune to steep inclines.
I can imagine a version of the hike where the wind is whipping around you constantly, but today the weather is glorious and it's views at the top are amazing as promised.
Once we return to town we're on a mission to find pastries. There is a bakery that we haven't tried yet, so we make that our goal. Unfortunately, when we get there they look closed (no baked goods in the display cases) but there are people in the building. I poke my head in and inquire if they are open and they tell us that they're selling their baked goods in the small grocery store across the street. We check out the grocery store and find the baked goods. Everything is a full cake or jelly roll and we decide nothing is enticing enough to buy something that we're going to have to throw half of out.
Once again, Amarant saves the day. We walk back there and get a cookie and a slice of cake and then return to the apartment. I make a decent pot of coffee, slice and toast some rye bread (also from Amarant) and we have a bite to eat.
After walking around town for a bit, we have our afternoon event which is a tea and traditional Faroese snacks at Marin Malena. The tea room is named after a famous Klaksvik woman from the early 1800's who was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Faroese independence. The tea room is a reproduction of the original house which was located just a few meters away (in what is now a road). The experience is part history, part high tea, and part traditional Faroese foodways preservation.
The person in charge of running the tea room also owns/runs the Cafe Frida located next door. She explained the history and importance of Nolsoyar Poul and Marin Malena to Fareose independence and it's obvious that this whole thing is a passion project for her. The space is charming, the teas are good, but the real star of the show (for me at least) is the traditional Faroese snacks.
Afterwards the tea the owner welcomes us to just hang out and ask questions, so we start to inquire about Klaksvik itself. It's always fun when you can get a local to dish on their town. There is a lot of building going on around the harbor, but she says no one can follow the plan because it keeps changing. It seems that Klaksvik is trying to embrace the fact that outside of Torshavn they are the number two destination for tourist (points to self). I detect that there is a local struggle between evolving Klaksvik into a town that welcome tourist and wholesale replacing what is here to be more tourist friendly. The owner has opinions on the correct path. I hope they get it right, because this town is charming and doesn't need to be something it's not. It will be interesting to see how things shake out over the next five years or so.
Tea takes us to nearly 5:00. After which we walk up to this studio on the edge of town that claims to teach traditional Faroese wool making crafts on Thursday nights. Alas, they are not open. Perhaps that is a tourist season thing. Since it is Thursday, that means bars might be open. Bars only seem to be open Thursday night (limited to a few hours), Friday night (longer hours), Saturday night (extended hours) and sometimes on Sunday in the Faroes islands. I've not seen a single bar open Monday - Wednesday.
We try one place that appears to be closed. The second one is open, but is a very simple pub. They have beer and some local bottles on a shelf behind the bar. We ask to try some of the local bottles since we weren't able to arrange a distillery tour while we were in town. We more or less assemble our own local tasting to the semi-frustration of pub owners who are used to slinging pints to cigarette smokers.
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