Iceland's Golden Circle

Hello Again!
Sorry for the delay, internet is dodgy at best and there is only so long you can hole up at a coffee shop in the middle of winter in London.

Going back to our last day in Reykjavik:
Matthew and I decided to do the touristy thing and book a day tour out to see what people refer to as the “Golden Circle” – it contains three of the most popular tourist destinations and the particular tour we booked also included a few extra stops!

The first stop was the Þingvellir National Park, where the American and Eurasian tectonic plates are gradually pulling apart approximately 4 centimetres per year. It was interesting in the sense that you could actually see the “rips” in the earth and long ago lava rock.

The next stop, still within the national park, was that of location of the oldest parliament in the world, Alþingi which was first held in 930AD. The lake has since then grown larger resulting in the parliament being moved to Reykjavik a few hundred years ago so there really isn't much recognizable left, however the landscape was beautiful!
The above picture shows the Icelandic Moss which grows on everything horizontal – it reminded me of green snow!

It started to rain as we made our way back to the bus – and it was the beginning of some awful weather!
Next stop (aside from a tea break at a cafe), was the Gullfoss Falls (aka Golden Falls) formed by the river Hvítá as it plunges into a crevice some 32 m (105 ft.) deep! The river was very swollen due to the constant rain and the above normal temperatures in the region which is causing the snow to melt at higher altitudes earlier than normal.
Sleet and snow with SUPER strong winds – We were SOAKED after taking these photos!

Next up: After stripping down to our long underwear and bottom layers (trying to get our jackets etc. to dry in the small visitor centre/cafe over lunch.. we moved on to the last of the “Golden Circle” site with a visit to the Geysir area (for which all other “Geysir”s in the world are named after).
The only currently “explosive” geysir was not the one named “Geysir” as it stopped “erupting” several years ago, however the hot spring known as Strokkur current shoots up a column of water up to 30m (98 ft.). It was definitely cool – but due to the inclement weather we only stayed for three displays (about 5 minutes apart) which was longer than anyone else in our tour group (and they had parkas!)

After this, we had some time to kill, since I think if the weather was nice, people tend to loiter around the site to take photos – Matthew and I went into the extensive gift shop since it was warm and free to get into. We both found things to entertain us….

We also visited a few other places – It included a geo-thermal power plant which was neat to see – especially coming from the land of dirty oil!

Till Next Time!

(Gotta wait for some more pictures to upload to Flickr)

Miranda & Matt