Our ship pulled into Reykjavik where we would spend the next night onboard, and depart in the morning. I had arranged a full days tour with Tours By Locals to visit what is known locally as the Golden Circle, a nearby circular route of highlights near this capital city of Iceland. Our first stop on the tour was at the eastern edge of the rift with the North American and European tetonic plates.
These plates have been separating for thousand of years at the rate of 1 inch per year, gradually making Iceland larger and larger. The rift at this location is a total of 6 km wide. That’s a lot of inches!
Our next stop was at Gullfoss Waterfall, and to say this area was crowded would be an understatement! Holy crap…it was worse than Disneyland in peak season! The reason for the crowds was quite evident though, as this is an incredible sight.
The video does it more justice!
This drop into the gorge is incredible!
The video is still better!
Every part of this waterfall is beautiful!
We had to do a selfie. Instagram here we come! Not.
On last shot of Gullfoss from up on the cliff above the falls.
The Amazing Race, Season 34, had a pit stop at this location. It wasn’t that long ago, and served as an additional incentive for us to visit this spot.
Our guide pointed out that the mountains behind us held a huge icefield….that looks like clouds, but that white is all ice, the Langjokull Glacier. This is the second largest glacier in Iceland, with the ice reaching a thickness of 1900 feet!
The next stop was the Geysir Hot Spring area, with the crowd favorite Strokkur geyser. This geyser erupts about every 7 minutes. We saw an initial eruption that was really small, and I walked away, only to see two more in rapid succession. I ended up waiting the agonizing 7 minute for the thing to blow again, and didn’t take the first little eruption as the main one. This was the second eruption, about 15 seconds later. This is NOT Old Faithful!
I liked the name of this little guy….bubbling away, minding his own business. No eruptions….maybe when he grows up?
Our last stop was a local dairy farm where they make the ice cream right there!
The ice cream was really good! Here are the cows eating up that wonderful hay, so they can make us some more ice-cream!
The next morning, our last view from our suite before we depart the ship and head into downtown Reykjavik for three days.
