The most popular day trip from Reykjavik is the Golden Circle tour, taking in Gullfoss, Geyser and Thingvellir, with a few extras along the way. That was my outing for today and it wasn’t hard to realise why it is so popular.
Our minibus picked us up soon after 8am and once the full complement of passengers was aboard from the different pick-up points we headed east to our first stop (apart from a coffee and toilet break) at Faxi waterfall, also known as Faxafoss.
Spectacular though that was, the real highlight of the day was the amazing Gullfoss – roughly translating to Golden Falls. I had visited Gullfoss many years ago, too far back to remember too much, but I do remember being blown away by the scale of it. The area has since been redeveloped with proper paths and boardwalks and viewing platforms now in place, but the falls themselves are still a sight to behold. Two drops, 11 metres and 21 metres, plunge the river into a 32-metre deep chasm with the attendant noise from the cascade just adding to the experience.
After that it was time for lunch, and fortunately there was a large restaurant at our next stop at the site of the Geyser which became a generic term for that phenomenon. Geyser itself no longer erupts on a regular basis but the nearby Strokkur whooshes into the air every ten minutes or so. There is a walkway around the various bubbling hot springs and one expects them to burst into life at any moment, but only Strokkur seems to do with any regularity.
We had a couple of other short stops before our final main one at Thingvellir National Park. Thingvellir was the site of of the Iceland’s first parliament and remained so for several hundred years. It sits between two tectonic plates, the North American and the Eurasian, and so has historical as well as geological interest. We could have done with a wee bit longer there, but there was enough time to get the feel of the place and there was the added bonus of being back in Reykjavik before 5pm. No day tours planned for tomorrow – another adventure awaits.
The China Penguin 