Day 6: Saturday, August 19, 2006

Here's the shower at Hótel Glymur. I like the fold-out walls.

Looking down from the loft:

We had been extremely lucky with the weather, as our visit coincided with the nicest week of the whole summer, thus far. But this morning we had some typical Icelandic clouds and rain. Still, not bad to look at!

Today our plan was to do the Golden Circle. After seeing it, I was even more appreciative of Anton's suggestion to reroute the jeep tour to Hekla, and come back for this in our car. It was a heavy tourist area, and there was no need for a jeep. I also understood that Anton must have been very bored of taking people there all the time! It's worth seeing, for sure, but not several times a week for years on end.

Anyway, the first stop was Þingvellir ("Gathering-plains"), where the largest natural lake in Iceland sits right on the continental divide, where North America and Europe are moving apart.

It's also the site of the Alþing, Europe's first parliment. From 10th century up to the 18th century, Iceland's local leaders always came for two weeks each year, to run all the goverment functions and set the foundation for Icelandic culture.

Because of its cultural and geological significance, Þingvellir is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Here you can see the way the ground has just split apart slowly over tens of thousands of years, because of the continental plates separating.

In the pool in which they used to drown women who broke the law, people now toss coins and make a wish.

This is Lögberg ("Law-rock") where it is believed the actual political meetings took place.

The continental divide is the source of Iceland's volcanic and geothermal activity. Here's a geothermal plant in the distance.

The second stop on the Golden Circle was Geysir, which has given its name to geysers all around the world. Here are some of the geothermal wells around the area.

"The great Geysir" doesn't erupt anymore, except maybe during an earthquake, but literally right next to it is Strokkur, which erupts every 5 to 15 minutes.

I also took a 5 second video of Strokkur erupting.

Then Liz and I climbed over this fence, to the top of a nearby hill...

where we watched Strokkur erupt from above.

This was the view on the other side of the hill.

You'd think that the tourist trap would have the most overpriced food, but in fact it was about 2/3 the price of the equivalent food that you'd see at gas station grills. A grilled vegetable sandwich, though, apparently means grilled cheese with lettuce and tomato. I didn't really enjoy the hot lettuce flopping out of the sandwich onto my face, but the fries were good. In Iceland fries are served with seasoned salt and "Kokteilsósa", which is like a mayonaise-y, ketchup-y sauce that I actually liked.

The Nordic flags. Can you guess which is which?

Our next stop was Gullfoss ("Golden-falls").

Can you see the double rainbow?

We were lucky to be there on such a sunny day. I was messing with my camera settings, so I tried taking this photo of the sun.

Go ahead, make a Lucky Charms joke if you must

You can play "where's Waldo" with the next two photos. Except of course it's "where's Matt"

This is the obligatory "don't be an idiot" sign

At this point we departed tourist-land, and drove about 40 minutes out of our way to go see the archeological site of a viking farmhouse, and its re-creation (below).

There was a little church along with the farmhouse.

As my friend Martha said, it looks like I'm coming home.

As you might guess, the walls are stacked sod.

And the ceilings are sod on top of logs.

The great hall is where the residents ate and slept. The men were on one side, and the women on the other. Except for the farmer and his wife, who slept in the cabinet (with the axes?).

The house also had a dairy

And a workroom for the women.

From here we drove a couple kilometers down a really rough dirt road, to the actual archelogical site

You can see why it had to be abandoned back in 1104: the valley got covered in ash, and still hasn't recovered!

Finally, we ended up at Country Hotel Anna, a farmhouse that was turned into a hotel in the 1960s. It was very homey... we were the only guests who got there before dinner, so the owner cooked a hommade dinner especially for us, we ate in the dining room alone, and they even put on mood music (classic latin love songs translated into Icelandic).

Spider! (outside the window)