Monday: Golden Circle

Today we went on a tour of the Golden Circle.  While it was a lot of driving, our tour guide was good and kept up a steady stream of (mostly) interesting information.  Ben and I both nodded off a bit when he was talking about elves and mythology, but it was also warm in the van and we had been driving a while.

Our first stop was at a bakery.  This stop was really just to break up the drive a little bit.  We were able to get an Icelandic donut, which was a deep fried ball with lemon drops (melted) and raisins.  It sort of tasted like your normal cake donut, but lemony and with a crispier outside.

Then we went to our first waterfall.  I forget the exact name, but it had something to do with it looking like a horse's mane.  There was also a salmon ladder.

After a stop at a barn (it seemed a bit like a random stop, but it was nice to get out), we went to the second waterfall.  It has a neat turn in it.

Then we went to a geyser.  There used to be another one 100 ft away and it's name was Geyser...it was the original one and where we get the word from.  We were able to see the steam start to come up, a big bubble of water appear, and then it would shoot high in the air.  It was probably my favorite part of the day.  It also had a whole bunch of false alarms where the pressure must have been evening out, because the top of the water would sink just a little bit.  Normally the geyser goes off every 5-10 minutes, but we had a few that were closer to 2.5min.  Since we had a limited amount of time there, it was nice that it went off a few extra times.

We made a quick detour to get some ice cream.  The milking cows on the island apparently have more milkfat (about twice as much) in their milk as other cows.  The ice cream was very creamy.  We were also able to see some of the cows who helped make the ice cream while we ate it.

Lastly we stopped at the mid-Atlantic rift.  It is a valley in between the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian one, so geologically speaking it is not part of a continent.

We had lots of rainbow sightings today.  The weather was nice the whole day...a possible drizzle, a little sun, but not too much of either.

For dinner we found an Icelandic sub shop.  It was similar to what we know, but still different enough to say we had something native.  Then we stopped to get a piece of chocolate cake and it was delicious.  Almost like an undercooked brownie, but more melty.  I'll leave you with a view from our hotel room.