On our third day we finally got out of the city and onto a bus to go see Iceland's famous Golden Circle. As you can see from this shot out of the bus window, it was once again raining.
Icelandic horses were everywhere in the countryside. They're calm and stocky, so they reminded me of Hugo.
Our first bus stop was at Þingvellir, which is the home of the ancient Icelandic parliament site and also the tectonic plate boundary of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Here you can see some spots where the plates are separating and widening the island.
Water is in serious abundance as a natural resource in Iceland from glacier runoff, natural springs, and tons of precipitation. The pictures don't really do justice to how exquisitely clear and blue the water was here.
During the brief patches when the rain would let up, fog would show up and pick up the slack to ensure you were never quite dry.
The flag on the hill marks the old outdoor Viking Parliament site, and this beautiful little stream was hidden just behind it.
More cracks, more fog. I don't remember the exact translation of Þingvellir, but let's assume it means "Oldfoggycrack."
Our next stop on the bus tour was at Gullfoss (Golden Falls) which, if you hadn't noticed, IS FREAKING RIDICULOUS.
Maggie's new wool hat got very wet here from the combination of the rain and the spray, leading me to refer to it as the "Stink Helmet" due to the unfortunate olfactory properties of wet wool.
Hopefully these convey just how crazy and massive the spray was coming off these falls.
They let you walk right up onto the rocks near the top of the falls so that you can be absolutely certain you're drenched before you leave.
Gullfoss was definitely one of the coolest things I've ever seen in person and one of the highlights of the trip.
From Gullfoss we continued to our final stop on the Golden Circle tour, which was Laugarfjall hill - home of the famous Geysir (from which we derived the English word geyser). This is Geysir itself, which is now dormant, but still quite hot and bubbly.
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My favorite part of this stop was Blesi - these twin pools. The left side one was an unreal shade of shimmering neon blue (even crazier in person than in the picture), and the right side had a neat cave inside it.
Next was Strokkur, which has taken over for Geysir and now erupts every 4-7 minutes.
We saw it go off three times during our visit. One of which I captured in this video.
These other pools were called Konungshver and Litli.
This was from the bus window on the way home. I'm used to the Rockies when it comes to mountains, so I was amazed at how smooth & black all the mountains are here since they're all newly formed from volcanic activity.
Three great adjectives to describe much of the Icelandic countryside: lumpy, mossy, steaming.
We ended the day with dinner at this Thai place, about 3 blocks from our apartment. Again, only one vegetarian entree, but it was outstanding and quite cheap compared to most restaurants in Reykjavík.