Tour Part 2: The Golden Circle Afternoon

Again, I apologize for my late posts.  The Eve Online Fan Fest has officially started and I've been these most of the day.  I've also been really really damn tired.  Today, May 2, 2014, I actually slept till 1 pm to play catch up.

So the Golden Circle tour consists of like 6 different sites all centering on Thingvellir National Park.  The Golden Circle Afternoon tour is shorter and only visits the three main sites:

* Thingvellir National Park and the site where the first democratic parliament (The Althing) was convened in 930 AD.

*The Gullfoss Cascades

*Geysirstoffa - main site for geysers and hot springs.  site of Strokkur, large geyser that goes off every 8 minutes or so.

To get an idea of how far the tour takes you, please see map marking Reykjavik and the sites I visited.

The landscape on the trip is filled with ice capped mountains as you can see below.

 

About an hour into the ride we get to our first stop, Thingvellir.  There is a typical Tourist Help Center.

Complete with restrooms if need be.  There is one catch though which I found very interesting....

 ...It will cost you 200 kr (about $2.00) to use the restroom.  So if you need to go, hopefully you brought cash with you. :)

So this park straddles the North American and European tectonic plates which leads to among other things beautiful and varied rock formations.

Thingvellir Visitor Center is also situated near a beautiful lake near city where the Althing was formed.  

Here is the actual town area.

Here are the lakes surrounding it.

 The next stop on the trip is the Gullfoss Cascades.

It begins with a very very long walk from the visitor's center.

 Here is the Gullfoss Cascade seen from the highest most area.

 To get a better view, you must go down the below stairs.  At  first I was not going to descend because it was fairly high and I was pretty exhausted just walking from the visitor's center.

 The view once I got to the bottom was well worth it.  It was worth all the labored breathing, aching back and every other pain to get there and back up to the visitor's center.   There was also the sense of accomplishment of pushing myself and the great reward I got from doing so.

I have to say so far, this is the most beautiful area I have seen.  The descriptions, the pictures cannot begin to describe the sheer beauty of this area.  It can only truly be appreciated first hand.

 

While I was sitting on the bench appreciating the beauty of this magnificent site, a British couple offered to take my picture next to the waterfall.  Talk about a stroke of good luck.  It came out perfect.

Finally, we reached Geysisstofa, or the Geysir Center.  As you can see on the opposite side of the sign, there is a hotel in the tourist/visistor center which is pretty nice.  The tour guide also said the restaurant is quite good.  All in all the geysers  were quite fun to watch, a marvel of the forces of geology and physics.

What I found hilarious was that the tour guide felt the need to explain that we should not touch the water or flow from the geyser's as they were boiling point or above and that this could cause major burns.   It seems some very intelligent people who come on these tours feel the need to "test" the water's temperature.  Will wonders ever cease?

To wit, please see the sign indicating the general temperature and please feel free to read the warnings on the below sign.  The last one cracked me up.

Now that we have gone through the precautions, here are a few of the hot springs....

And here is the geyser Strokkur which goes off every 8 minutes more or less.  The original geyser which gives use the word geyser (GEYSIR) is currently dormant so we could not see it.  Well, we could see it we just wouldn't see much action. :)

Here are some videos I took of the geysers and springs.  Please forgive the idiot who walked in the way of my filming, I have despite the choice words I had for him in Spanish when he did that.

Finally, I leave you with this creepy statue/wood carving of a farmer found near the geyser area.  That shit scares me. Really.  And it's like only 300 meters away from the hotel.  I would never sleep there.  Fuck that.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my posted. Until next time...I am thinking of visiting the Blue Lagoon tomorrow so maybe some pics from there.