We had a full day today, although we didn’t get started until later. We met for breakfast (included with this hotel) at 9:30am. After breakfast, we sat down and made a more organized plan for the day. We probably left the hotel around 11:30am.
First we went to the Geysir Center, which is right next door (and a popular tourist stop for people who are staying elsewhere in Iceland!). We expected it to be more of an info center, but what we found was a huge gift shop and a restaurant with good grab-and-go food options. We wandered through the gift shop and then decided to head back across the street to the geothermal area where we were last night.
What we hadn’t yet realized last night was that there is a geysir right across the street that erupts regularly, similar to Old Faithful in Yellowstone. We walked down the path, seeing some other bubbling spots on the way, and made our way to Strokkur Geysir.
Here is a fun progression of one of the times it erupted…
You can hike up a big hill behind the geothermal area to get a great view of the area, including glaciers, apparently. I’ll be doing that another day!
From the geothermal area, we set out on the route we had planned to travel around what’s called the Golden Circle. We started very close to our hotel, only about 10 minutes away, with the well-known Gullfoss Waterfall. Absolutely beautiful! There are places where you can see it from the top, and then you can hike down to see it from different angles. We followed signs for the lower falls, and that seemed to be enough - we didn’t feel like we needed to do the upper part as well.
From there we got back in the car and went to the Faxi Waterfall. We were there with only like three other people, which was definitely not the case at Gullfoss! Much smaller scale waterfall, but very serene. This one has a man-made ladder on the left side that is to help salmon swim upstream! So cool!
We drove on to the small town (not even sure it’s a town, actually) called Skálholt to see the Skálholt Cathedral. Again, nobody there but us! (And one young woman who was digging dandelions out of the corners of pavement/curbs, and seemed very uninterested in doing her job) We took a few pictures…
…and then I noticed an open doorway under the building. You could pay $3 or so to go into the crypt! Um yes, I told Ken and Pauline I was definitely doing that. I told them if I didn’t come back to send somebody after me to find me.
Turns out that once I got through the tunnel, there was a door to open that basically took me into a basement museum. In there was a stone coffin that was discovered in 1954 during an excavation! It contained a bishop’s skeleton and some bones from other people! I’ll put the full story below if you want to read it.
I wandered through the museum (the coffin was the most interesting part) and then found my way to some stairs that led up to the sanctuary itself. I told Ken and Pauline to come in and join me. It was quaint and gorgeous.
Took a couple of pictures outside around the church. No idea what the purpose is of that grass-roof building next door, but it looked interesting!
Next we went to the Kerid Crater, a volcanic crater lake. The first pic I’ll post is me at the very top point, and then I’ll post one from the bottom. If you zoom in on the one I took at the bottom, you can see people at the very top to get an idea of the size of this thing. Before we left the Kerid Crater, we sat at picnic tables and ate the sandwiches we’d picked up from the grab-and-go at the Geysir Center.
We got back in the car and kept driving until we came to the town of Selfoss. Nothing in particular we wanted to see there, but we found a grocery store, Ken found the wine store, and we stopped in a bakery/cafe, mostly so we could use the WC! But Ken and Pauline also shared a snack. Then we filled up on gas. Here’s Ken getting instructions on how paying for/pumping gas works in Iceland! You pay first at one central location, and then it lets you pump gas at your pump.
We drove for an hour after that to get to the Thorufoss Waterfall. Pauline said, “this one is truly a hidden gem!” We drove right past it because the “parking lot” was so small, and you can’t see the waterfall from the road. We missed the small sign, but quickly realized it and turned around so we could park and make the short walk to see it. Here is the waterfall, and then you’ll see where our car was parked all by itself! Today we definitely found the places away from other people. Such the opposite of London and Paris! The Thorufoss Waterfall was used in the filming in Game of Thrones, along with a lot of other areas in Iceland.
We knew we wanted to stop at Thingvellir National Park. It’s there that you can see and walk through Almannagjá Gorge. The whole thing is 8km long, and we didn’t walk far on it, but it is the rift/space between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. It is said that Thingvellir National Park grows a bit each year as the tectonic plates slowly pull away from each other.
There was also a beautiful view from there, including seeing Thingvallakirkja Church! The church is only open in the summer, so I was bummed that we’d miss it but was thrilled to be able to see it from afar! I have a thing for churches in general… especially cute remote ones. :)
From the national park we decided it would soon be dinner time, and we were still almost an hour from our hotel. The easiest decision was to return to where we ate dinner last night. We had all seen the pizza and thought it looked really good, so we went again and got pizza (and more chocolate mousse!).
Then we made the short drive back to our hotel so we could blog and rest.
I’ll leave you with a couple of other beautiful pictures taken along the Golden Circle today…
It was another banner day!
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