Thursday, 2 Feb – Golden Circle

Today was the day to drive the “Golden Circle” to view tectonic and geothermal areas of the island. We tried to use the alarm to wake up earlier and it worked after three “snooze” on the iPhone. We left by 10 am and proceeded up towards our aurora spot but turned off and headed to Þingvellir National Park and stopped a few times to take pictures. Weather.com said that is was “partly cloudy” and a lot of that came down in the form of snow and rain, so the pictures are not wonderful, but the scenery was amazing. Some of the roads reminded me of Thule.

We then continued on and stopped where a large group of people were petting Icelandic horses. They are an ancient breed, like the Fjord horse we had 30 years ago, but no dorsal stripe. They are similar in size, and draftiness, about 14 hands, I would say (56″ for those not horsey). I’m told they have something like 7 different gaits, but at this point they were more interested in being patter or fed.

We then drove on to the geothermal area, Geysir, and saw and smelled  various geothermal items, as we had I. Rotorua and Yellowstone, including the eponymous geysers. (I hope I used that word right). BTW – the English word “geyser” co,es fro hate name of this town. It was amazing to see how many tourists were on the Golden Circle in the middle of winter.  The summer must be unbelievable

We then drove up to Gullfoss to see a waterfall that is, I’m sure, magnificent in good weather, but didn’t see anything. We then drove down the rift and back towards Reykjavik. We stopped for lunch at þrastlundar Pizza, which was very nice with a lovely view.

We came back to the apartment and have relaxed, since the aurora forecast was a three and looked like cloud cover. Also we were pretty exhausted.