Iceland Part Deux

Well this post took a little while. But I didn't want to add it until I had all the pictures from mine and Nory's camera. So pictures have now been added to the Photo Gallery
http://www.uncasvet.com/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi?cmd=show_thumbs&path=Iceland&tn=1

Day 3
So after staying in Arnes, we got up early the next morning and headed North towards the big attractions of the Golden Circle. First off we hit an old volcanic crater which was big and deep. The whole area is chock full of volcanoes and the land around it was very rocky with remnants of lava.

Then we headed up to Geysir. The original! All Geysirs were named after this one, the original in Iceland. Unfortunately it doesn't erupt nearly as often as in the old days. We actually never saw it blow it's top. But there was another one near it, that erupted about every 5 mins. Iceland has a hot and a warm geothermal area. The warm is a mere 100 degrees C, but this area of Geysirs is in the hot part, i.e. 250 degrees C. Little too warm for a bath.

After that we headed up to Gulfoss! The most famous waterfall in Iceland. 250m long with a 32m drop. It was magnificent! The path down to the waterfall was pretty icy, on the way down we sorta skated it, but the way back was tricky. I turned around and Nory was on the ground, half underneath the guide ropes trying to stop himself from rolling down the hill. But the view was sure amazing. Almost like a black and white photo due to all the snow and rock.

Then we headed to our hostel. The plan was to drop off our stuff and then take a short drive to Thingveller. But after we got to the hostel, we found out the shortcut road to Thingveller was in poor poor condition and travel was not recommended. So here we were, with nothing else to see for the day, stuck in a town of 2oo people at 3 in the afternoon. So we drove around....for 2 mins. The natural sauna was closed up, but luckily for us the swimming pool/rec center was open. So we swam and played some B-ball and wasted as much time as we could. Our hostel was pretty much empty except for two students who attended the local sports college. So Nori and I played chess most of the night and kept a lookout for Northern Lights although they never showed.

Day 4
Now we took the long route to Thingveller (it's actually spelled different in Iceland, it's gotta funny character that looks sorta like a P).
This is the place of great historical importance for Iceland. For a lot of reasons actually. Backtrack some millions of years, Iceland is actually made up of two plates. Half of Iceland is part of the North American plate and the other half is part of the Eurasian plate. And they meet right in the middle at Thingveller. So this is literally where Iceland came together, and actually where it's moving apart. 2cm each year, the plates are moving apart.

Not only that but this is the place where the people of Iceland came together from the 1100's. This is where they formed the government, made decisions, accepted Christianity, handed out punishment and much more. This truly was the center of history for Iceland. It was really cool!

Lastly we headed back to Reykjavik. We went and toured the amazing church and took the elevator to the top to get a great view of Reykjavik. After that we simply toured the center. Entering the little shops, buying souvenirs. After that we headed back to the hostel to drop off the rental car and then headed back to the center. After a really expensive dinner we headed back to the church. We bought tickets to a Christmas concert for that night! It was pretty cool, with a big church choir and that massive church organ, as well a famous Icelandic singer was there and she obviously quite a favorite in Iceland. The people just never stopped clapping. We got two encores out of it!!

And that was all she wrote. The next morning we got a bus ride to the airport and parted our ways. Nory going back to Denmark and me heading to London for one day to meet up with Sergi.
But it was an absolutely amazing trip, I'm so glad I got to do it. Thats it for me! Hopefully another post soon about life back at home!