Day 2 - Iceland Driving

 

Rent a car 12900kr
Breakfast 1300kr
Snack @ Geysir 1400kr
Gas 3100kr
Dinner (3 people) 6700kr
Hostel (3 beds) $98
Bus ticket to airport in the morning 7500kr

 

 

Today we drove the Golden Circle. But first breakfast: a nice little cafe which was obviously just someone's home that had been converted. Not much in the way of zoning laws in Iceland, I guess. It was delicious.

Now, the Golden Circle: We had read about it in several tourist guides -- it's just a road that goes past a few cool attractions, and there are nice views along the way. It was well worth it for 3 people to rent a car and do it ourselves; there are bus tours, but I don't think the experience would have been enhanced by having someone talking to us the whole time. We had the friendly hotel concierge book us a rental car and give us directions, and we were on our way. Tim was originally going to drive, but we discovered that the car we rented (and pretty much any car you rent in Europe, as far as I can tell) was a standard, and I'm the only one of us who can drive one. So I ended up behind the wheel.

Icelandic is an ancient language and it has a lot of weird characters. The Þ (thorn) is pronounced "th" (as in thorn), and we were confusing it with a P for a while. The first stop on the Golden Circle is Þingvollir, and we were talking about "Pingvollir" until someone helpfully corrected us to "Thingvollir".

Þingvollir is a national park which you can wander around in. And wander we did. We spotted a church-like object on the horizon and just headed to it. It was, indeed, a church, though we couldn't go in; there was a very small cemetery as well. We followed some more trails, and at some point there was no more trail but we kept walking; at some point we got to a crevice and jumped over it. That was a bit scary.

 

Geysir is the next stop. It is a geyser. Actually, it's the original geyser (why they are all called geysers). It is also one of the tallest in the world, although it rarely erupts. But Strokkur, right next to Geysir, does erupt often (every 5 minutes or so), shooting hot water 30 meters high. There was a bench close to Strokkur which mysteriously nobody was sitting on. So we sat, and watched. After a few minutes, sure enough, the geyser exploded. It was a big one. We got pretty wet (but not burned; the water cools down to a pleasant shower temperature by the time it lands). I tried to take a picture of the burst of water coming at us, but my camera malfunctioned at that moment and all I got was black. I did get a decent geyser picture from another angle.

Besides Geysir and Strokkur, there were several other water pools, some steaming, others glowing.

 

The last "official" stop on the Golden Circle was Gullfoss, which is a really large waterfall, not quite as big as Niagara, but pretty big nonetheless.

On the way back we're driving through rural Iceland and drive by some decent sized hills. So we decide to hike one of them. Tim points at the top and says "15 minutes to the top," which sounds crazy to me, but we give it a shot. After 15 minutes, sure enough, the top is very close. We get to it -- only to discover that it's not the real peak and there's more to climb. So we climb on. Ten minutes later we get to the next peak and it's also not the real peak, so we climb on again. After another ten minutes, the same thing happens. It turns out that there's one more. Tim soldiered on, but Neil and I stayed at the third peak to wait for him. That one was the real top. Going down was fun but treacherous: it was very steep, and there were lots of crevices covered by moss where you could easily get a foot stuck. But we made it down safely.

 

Returned the rental car and had dinner at a thai place in Reykjavik. Not great. The water smelled like sulfur (however, as it turned out, this was the only place on our whole trip which would give us free water with dinner! Europe doesn't work quite like the US, I guess.)

Hotel Floki was where we had booked beds. Apparently this was a busy time in Reykjavik, so we had some trouble. It's more of a hostel, so you don't get a private room, and in this case we each ended up with different rooms. I met some cool people in my room, but of course we didn't spend much time there because we had to get up at hell o'clock for the airplane. Didn't sleep well that night.

 

 

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