DAY 2: The Golden Circle
With over 24 hours of no sleep we set off into an unfamiliar country hoping to see some beautiful landscapes around the Golden Circle. The Golden Circle is definitely Iceland’s biggest tourist attraction. It consists of 3 major destinations: Thingvellir National Park, Geysir, and Gullfoss.
Our tour began with a scenic drive through Thingvellir National Park. The is filled with history and geological significance, and is even the location of the Icelandic Parliament, called Althingi. The park was about a 35 mile drive from one end to the other and we had to drive through a majority of it in order to get to Geysir. We drove past huge mountains and lakes, all covered with snow. The park was pretty, but not very exciting considering everything was covered in snow and ice. It was a little too cold to get out of the car and go explore, and the ice made it difficult to do any hiking. Overall, we used it as an opportunity to take in the beautiful scenery of Iceland and take a few pictures with the mountains. One of the coolest parts about driving through the park was that it was very easy and convenient to pull off on the side of the road at any point in order to take a picture or find a cool attraction.
One of the few stops we made on our drive through Thingvellir National Park was to a waterfall called Oxararfoss. We pulled off into a small parking lot and made a small hike toward the waterfall. It ended up being slightly dangerous because the path toward the cliff was very icy and there was only a small rope for us to hold on to in order to prevent us from falling. However, the views were well worth it, and even though it was covered in snow and ice, it was still a site to see.
Overall, I found Thingvellir National Park to be very beautiful but not the most exciting thing we did (that happens in Day 4). I think the issue was that we could not experience the true beauty of the hikes because of the ice. We were mostly stuck driving in our car and looking out at the fields of snow. When we did get out, we could barely see any type of path, and it was far too cold to be outside for more than 10 minutes at a time. I definitely recommend driving through and seeing the scenery but don’t expect to do much more than take a few pictures in the winter when it’s covered in snow.
Our next stop was far more exciting, Geysir! The all-natural hot spring shoots boiling water about 200+ feet in the air every couple of minutes. Our drive from the National Park to Geysir was about a 45 minute drive, and at that point my boyfriend and I were starting to feel the jet lag and needed something a bit more exciting to wake us up. When we arrived at Geysir we parked across the street by a tourist shop and restaurant. We then proceeded to walk along this dangerously icy path where we saw a smaller hot spring called Little Geysir. It was simply just a small pond of boiling water that had steam and was bubbling… nothing too exciting. The real excitement was where Strokkur was.. or Geysir. As we were walking up to the smaller hot pot we saw the huge Geysir shoot off into the air. We quickly hurried over to the spot and tried to set our camera up so we could catch it the next time. It was truly amazing how the water just shot up from the ground out of no where and went over 200 feet into the air. It is truly a site to see. Since the phenomenon happens every couple of minutes, the excitement was over relatively quickly. We saw it shoot off, too some pictures, watched it again, and then decided we were freezing and wanted to go eat. We decided to grab our first Icelandic lunch at the restaurant next to Geysir and it was delicious. The restaurant was very upscale and had a nice variety of lunch options and even desserts. I had a Margarita Pizza (which is really just a cheese pizza, don’t be fooled) and it tasted very different from American pizza, but was still delicious.
After our lunch we got back in our car and drove just 10 minutes to Gullfoss. If I’m being completely honest in this post.. I was not very impressed with Gullfoss. When I was doing my Icelandic research everyone told me that Gullfoss was THE place to go in Iceland. Don’t get me wrong, it was certainly beautiful but it just didn’t excite me. Maybe it was because I have been to Niagara Falls before and already had my awe moment with a waterfall. Or, it was probably because the wind chill from the waterfall literally froze every bone in my body and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to walk anymore. I don’t know what the reason was, but I was very tired and very cold when I went there so it just didn’t excite me as much as I wanted it to. I would definitely still recommend it to anybody who visits Iceland because it is massive and amazing to witness, but be warned, it feels like sub zero temperatures when you get even within 500 feet of the place. When we got there, we had to walk down a huge flight of stairs and the wind was so bad that I had to use all of my strength to make sure I didn’t fall down. It was blowing all in our faces and making our eyes water, so we couldn’t really see where we were going. But once we finally got down there we hurried to the viewing point snapped a few pictures, took in the beauty and high tailed it out there before we froze to death. It was quite the experience, and definitely something that’s probably more fun in the summer.
At this point we had finished our Golden Circle tour and were ready to head back to the hotel. We were both so tired that we could hardly walk back to the car. The jet lag had set in so bad I found myself falling asleep while standing. We were both going on less than 2 hours of sleep and were desperate to get back to our room. We had about an hours drive before we made it back into the city and along the way I found myself causally dozing off in the car and waking myself back up because I wanted to make sure my boyfriend didn’t fall asleep behind the wheel. Lucky for us the roads were very clear so we sped back to the hotel as fast as we could, changed into our pajamas and fell asleep at 5pm. Not only was it incredible early in Iceland, but at home it was only 1pm. We knew our sleep schedule was going to be way off but we didn’t care because we were soo tired. We ended up falling asleep at 5pm and waking up at 11:30pm the same day. We were then wide awake from 11:30 until 2pm before finally falling back asleep and waking up at 7am. Needless to say we finally got our sleep schedule on track, and it was relatively easy to do so because of the long, dark nights.
Read about Day 3 here
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