Iceland: Part 4

No trip to Iceland would be complete without doing the Golden Circle, a route through the Icelandic countryside and, incidentally, some of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world.

We took our Sad Car from our little cabin in the lava fields and drove about 100km in total through Thingvellir National Park to a collection of geysirs, the most active of which is the awesome (in the literal sense of the word) Strokkur to Gullfoss, the golden waterfall.

 Thingvellir is not only really, breathtakingly beautiful, as any national park should be, I suppose, it is smack dab on the line fault line that separates North America from Europe. In between there’s a gorgeous river and waterfall that pours North American water into Europe. We hung out in this no man’s land between two continents for a while, enjoying the sights and thinking about the fact that the plate spreads at 2 cm a year- that’s a lot!

 Next was Geysir, which is actually a collection of geysirs along the same North American/European plate that we were between just a few hours before. These geysirs are actually part of the same “family” as Ol’ Faithful in the USA.

 Strokkur is the only geysir that goes off with regularity- about once every 4-8 minutes. Geysir, which, when it does go off, is spectacular, tends to be active only before and after volcanic events- so I guess it is actually kind of good that we didn’t see Geysir go. Strokkur was impressive enough, anyway.

Finally, we came to Gullfoss, an amazing double-tiered waterfall with, as you can see, a perpetual double rainbow. It was absolutely spectacular.

 After all that time in nature, I needed to get back to the “big city.” In Iceland, that’s Reykjavik, a city with about 200,000 people in it- about the size of small towns in the state I grew up! But despite its tiny size, Reykjavik has a LOT going on- including some of the best food I’ve ever had!

The best place for food in Reykjavik, in case you’re wondering, is the Fish Company. Even with my vegetarian leanings, they had lots of options for me- and everyone else, who were in the mood for more traditional (and meaty) Icelandic fare.

 I opted for the Artic Char with tuber pasta and Icelandic langoustine whilst the boys both had puffin and whale in chocolate sauce.

 After eating, we explored the city a bit. We were most impressed by Hallgrímskirkja, the iconic church that stands in the city center. It is quite austere, but beautiful in its simplicity, which was fine after the rich, majestic beauty of the rest of the country.