We saved some of the most visited sites for our last day in Iceland. Lots of buses take tourists to visit three sights in a single day: Gullfoss, Geysir, and Þingvellir National Park. This is often referred to as The Golden Circle as you can include Seljalandfoss and actually make it into a circle. Since we had already visited Seljalandfoss, we headed straight to Gullfoss.
Gullfoss is a very powerful waterfall with two levels.
To get a good view of how tall the lower falls are, you need to hike up a bit so you can see down into the trench it has carved.
Just down the road from Gulfoss are two geysers, Geysir and Strokkur. Geysir was the first geyser to be documented by modern Europeans and is the source of the English word “geyser.” Geysir no longer regularly erupts, but Strokkur does every few minutes.
We walked around the geysers for a bit and watched several eruptions, then jumped back in the car and headed to our final destination for the day, Þingvellir National Park. Þingvellir is cool for a lot of reasons. First, it was the original seat of Iceland’s Parliament and an important meeting place for the various tribes of Iceland for a long time. Second, it is the location where two continental plates are separating by about 2 centimeters per year, and you can literally see the result as the area is being pulled apart. There is a large canyon you can walk down that is the result of tectonic plates moving. You can see the canyon in this photosphere:
Here’s another photosphere from the Parliament rock, where the laws used to be read:
We spent a couple of hours here walking around the lake, streams, the church, and the canyon.
Here’s a short clip of a waterfall that drops right into the canyon:
And a photo of us in front of the waterfall:
We actually had big plans for this evening – it was time to try Icelandic cuisine. We made a reservation for a nice restaurant in Reykjavik, Þrír frakkar, where they serve traditional Icelandic fare. We ordered three appetizers and two entrees to split between the four of us. First up, fermented shark:
Everyone but Debi was able to get their piece of frozen, fermented shark down. Debi gagged on hers. Imagine the most fishy tasting fish you’ve ever had, then leave it to spoil for, let’s say, a week. Then freeze it. That’s what fermented shark tastes like. Not a winner.
Next up was, sadly, puffin breast:
We asked on our whale and puffin viewing trip if puffins were endangered and they said no, so I didn’t feel bad ordering this. It’s basically thin strips of puffin breast, perhaps lightly cooked, served with a mustard sauce. It tasted kind of like chicken, but more oily and stringy. Everyone tried it, but I ended up eating most of it.
We also ordered fish stew as an appetizer, which wasn’t particularly exotic, and most everyone liked it. For the entrees, it was a lamb steak (split between Debi and Rosemary) and a horse steak (split between Toren and me). The steaks were all good; horse tastes a lot like cow.
Dinner was crazy-expensive, but we got to sample the local cuisine.
After dinner, we headed back to our B&B to pack up and get ready for our early flight the next day. We did stop briefly at the park near our B&B to let Toren run around a bit, but otherwise that pretty much wraps up our trip to Iceland. Though, see my next post where I highlight one other thing we did while we were there…
