The Golden Circle

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Yesterday (the 28th) was a truly magical day. I opted into the golden circle that hits up 3 of Iceland's most beautiful sites. I lucked out and was put on a bus with 60ish year old guide, Fanny, who was incredibly knowledgeable and told her personal anecdotes of the country throughout the tour. This entry will mostly be recaps of what I learned from her - especially the fact that she without a word of a lie said "some people say it's fifty shades of grey, but Iceland is fifty shades of white" ?

Iceland has 2 Geothermal plants, the bigger of the two being the second biggest in world. We drove past them both on our way and were informed that about 80% of the country is heated by geothermal energy that costs approximately $2 a day!

"Ain't nobody got time for road barriers" is probably what the road guys said when they were building the ring road, swerving down a mountain at a 35ish degree slope! Not scary though - we had the best driver in Iceland according to Fanny.

The landscape was just absolutely breathtaking, honestly I've never seen anything like it before. It's like every direction you look at all times is straight out of a national geographic magazine! Picturesque mountains and volcanoes dusted recently with pure white snow and surrounded by old lava fields to remind you of the theme of the day; that Iceland is very much alive and always changing.

Really the only wildlife we see are the purebred Icelandic horses scattering the fields. There are only Icelandic horses here and there are approximately 100,000 of them or one for every 3 citizens! Apparently they have 5 gates instead of the standard 4 called a tuft (not sure on the spelling there) Which is a galloping speed but so smooth you can drink a glass of milk and not spill a drop.

A really cool thing we talked about was the crazy amount of superstition in the country. Almost everyone believes in the hidden world and hidden people, so much that Fanny told us that engineers had to consult with the elves via a psychic to make sure it was okay to move their church (a boulder) out of the way to build a road. You may also have thought that those are power lines running paralell to the road, says Fanny, but they're actually fences to make sure the trolls don't cross the road and get hit by a car. Weird but totally cool that the whole country is on board!

Iceland has the most golf courses per capita with 1/5000 ppl.

I guess eventually I should talk about what we actually visited. Our first stop was a tomato operation in a greenhouse where we learned how tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuce are all grown in such a harsh climate. We got the chance to try some tomato soup and boy was it ever good! We then drove a little further to the site of the Geysir... The one and only geyser that all other geysers are named after. Although the original is now dormant, Strokkur, just a few feet away, likes to show off every 4-6 minutes spouting boiling water up to 34m in the air! I got a pretty awesome selfie with it 😉 After checking that out I wandered over a fence and up a mountain which is where today's picture comes from. The single most incredible view I've ever seen, and the picture absolutely doesn't do it justice. Of course, everyone else follows my path up eventually and I have started a trend !
We then moved on the the Gullfoss waterfall to which I was like "I've seen Niagara falls, how cool can this be," but let me tell you it was pretty sick. Two tiers of ice cold glacial water in a deep canyon surrounded by a white desert, pretty sick.

Our last stop was the Icelandic national park, Þingvellir. I won't go into to much detail because by now you're all stabbing your eyes out wondering if this is every going to be over. But, it was the site of the first every parliamentary gathering in the world and also the site of the longest visible separation between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates that are stretching apart at a rate of 2cm per year. The rock face of the North American plate is 70m high and 82km long, approximately 7-13km away from the Eurasian playe.Also the site of the fourth season of game of thrones, but that's not important. It's also just a super beautiful national park with a huge lake and unbelievable scenary.

Just 2 more things, I promise.

On our way back home, Fanny told us about the happy marriage cake baking tradition. In order to be married, the wife must be able to bake the happy marriage cake perfectly. If the mother in law likes it, then she is able to carry on with the marriage, if not... Well sucks to be you.

And last but certainly not least, McDons went bankrupt in Iceland, which explains why there are 0 obese people here.

That's all.

-NB

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Photos

Wow
The view from the top of a mountain near Geysir.

Comments

[Maureen]

Loving the blog!!!
Hi Nic! No danger of me poking my eyes out......I'm enjoying your observations and photos a lot! Keep them coming! It might be tempting to slow down a bit as you travel further but fingers crossed you still find time to keep us up to date!! Enjoy!!