Day 5 Golden Circle and Thingvellir National Park
We had a slower start this morning. Breakfast was the usual fare. It’s funny how the different hotels are pretty consistent with their breakfast offerings. It’s going to be another sunny day here. Road conditions are good, we are ready to venture out again.
Our first stop today is Gullfoss Falls. This waterfall is made up of multiple waterfalls. We took a walk to the top to see how it converges. The waterfall is mostly frozen but you can still see that there is a lot of water that flows here.
We next went to Strokkur Geisir, and stayed here quite a while to capture the video. Please enjoy it as it took a few tries to capture the eruption. It’s pretty cold so between my freezing hands to hold the phone steady and the battery draining quickly, the video was a bit of effort. There was not a strong sulfur smell so that was very helpful.
Faxafoss is the next waterfall that we visited. This place charges 700 krona to get in so it’s not a very crowded place. In fact we had it all to ourselves for a bit. That was nice after the very crowded geisir. I think this waterfall was pretty good even though it’s not well known like Gullfoss.
Our last stop on the Golden Circle loop is the Kerid Crater. This crater is believed to have been formed by a volcanic eruption. It’s fully frozen. We took a walk around the crater so there are various views from our walk.
Today is the day for our Icelandic hotdog. We stopped by a gas station, gassed up and had hotdogs for lunch. I am no expert but Rick thought that they were excellent. They were cheap, about $3.15 each.
All done with the Golden Circle, we headed towards Thingvellir National Park. This is where there the Eurasian tectonic plate and the North American tectonic plate come together. The picture of me walking on the walkway is going right in between the two. People come here and snorkel between the fissure but no thank you. It seems unnecessary subjection to more cold. Coming out of the park, you have to pay for parking. There are cameras reading your license plates so I wonder how many people get a surprise ticket for not paying.
Now we head to our hotel, in the Snaefellnes Peninsula, which is 2.25 hours away. It’s already 4:00 so it’ll be dinner time by the time we get there. On the way there we went through a very long tunnel. Over it was a very big lake. The tunnel was 3.6 miles long.
We decided to stop and have dinner so we went to La Colina Pizzeria in Borganes. I had the pepperoni and mushroom and Rick ordered the carne which had ground beef, ham, bacon and pepperoni. The pizzas reminded me of Mod Pizza.
Rick's notes for the day: Have you ever had one of those travel days where multiple things did not work out? For me, today was one of those days. Actually, it started yesterday evening. When I was unloading our larger suitcase from the car and wheeling it into the room, it was pulling in an odd manner. Later on when I went back to the car, I noticed what appeared to be part of one of the outer plastic wheels had broken in half. Upon further inspection in the room, I found the other half of the outer plastic wheel still attached to the suitcase caster. On the upside, there is an inner wheel that should help that suitcase make it through the trip. Unfortunately, after the broken wheel, stuff did not get much better. At the first stop Gulfoss Falls, I was trying to manage taking off my gloves, sunglasses and hat in the wind to put on my gaiter. The wind started to blow my sunglasses away and with my cat-like reflexes, I grabbed at them only to snap them where the lenses connect to the bridge piece. On the upside, Maui Jim is very good at repairing/replacing glasses as I have probably broken my glasses 5-10 times in the past 15-20 years. And then my final mishap of the day was getting to our cottage for the night and being able to only find one glove in my jacket pocket. I am thinking it must have fallen out at the Thingvellier parking lot as I needed to pay for parking using my phone and I took my gloves off to have more dexterity and it must not have fully made it into my coat pocket. On the upside, I did bring two pair of gloves on this trip...as I know myself. Hopefully I got all the mishaps of the trip out of the way on this day.
Some of the highlights of the day for me:
Faxafoss Falls - I thought this one was extra cool because you could pretty much walk right up to the base of it. It is not super high but the volume and force of the water is impressive. It was 700 krona (about $5) to enter the parking lot and there was only one other car there when we first got there and they left while we were walking down to the falls so we have our on private falls which was nice.
Since today involved a bunch of driving, our lunch was an Iceland delicacy. A hot dog from one of the N1 gas stations with a mini-market. For about $3, the dog was pretty tasty. It definitely had a more snappy casing than most American hot dogs. Also, I got the dog with everything which included fried onions (think little bits of onion rings beneath the dog in the bun). The fried onions defintely made it better. Also, the mustard was more of a honey mustard so that was a nice flavor. While I was eating the hot dog, I was wondering if I have had a hot dog in the US in the past 10 years (excluding the Costco hot dog)...I think probably not.
My final highlight of the day was driving through the super long tunnel ( Hvalfjörður Tunnel ) under the Hvalfjörður fjord. It is about 6 km and reaches a depth of about 540 feet below sea level. The tunnel was dark but well lit. There were exhaust fans mounted to the ceiling every few hundred meters but it still smelled a bit like car exhaust in the tunnel. All-in-all a super cool tunnel. I am looking forward to going back through it on the way to Reykjavik. Maybe I will see if I can convice Rosie to shoot some video...fingers crossed!
Rosie comment: My Northern lights shots for tonight. Getting better!
The moon over the water so it lights the water.
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