Today, I had a plan. Not a vague “go here, then there” plan like I’d had for the last two days, but a minute-by-minute itinerary, and I was sure that it was only mildly hopeless that we were going to follow it.
- No more 10pm dinners!
- We were going to have reservations!
- We had places to eat!
It was very tidy and almost immediately we were off schedule. And by off schedule, I mean we were 30 minutes early! Yay!
The plan was to “do the Golden Circle” - which is on every tour of Iceland that goes beyond Reykjavik and the Blue Lagoon. The Golden Circle - a route that reaches up into the hinterland outside the big city - includes Gulfoss (huge waterfall), the original Geysir, and Thingvellir, where the North American and European plates are pulling apart. It would be a lot, but we could do all of it in a reasonable time if we stuck to the schedule.
But first, we had some unfinished business with a nearby waterfall.
Seljalandsfoss
We had yet to see Seljalandsfoss - the waterfall that we had been admiring from our little cottage for the last three days. Despite our proximity, we had yet to see it up close, and every day, the weather seemed to cooperate with us less and less. This was our last chance, so we had to go and hope for the best.
Anticipation building
There are a lot of waterfalls in Iceland, but Seljalandsfoss is possibly the most photographed of them all - because it is beautiful. And you can walk behind it. So naturally, it is mobbed at all times of day, and because of our latitude, and night too. We hoped that by leaving early, we might be some of the crowd, so we jumped in the car, bid adieu to the little cottage, and headed in the opposite direction of the Golden Circle.
Looking out from behind Seljalandsfoss
We had known it was going to be pretty - Microsoft Bing had courteously made it my laptop desktop background just days before, which was some deep karmic foreshadowing or helpfully building up some unnecessary anticipation - but it was breathtaking in person, and wet.
Bundled up against the wetness (left) | The Fam at Seljalandsfoss Waterfall (right)
We checked out the neighboring Gljufarbui waterfall, then headed back to the car - we were now only 11 minutes behind schedule! Win!
While we’d only made one stop, our next destination was lunch. We headed up the hillside of the southern uplands through bucolic valleys and countryside. Just as we reached Reykholt, and the site of our lunch reservations, it started to rain.
Dantaxi
Laugras Bridge over the Hvita River
Restaurant Mika had an exterior appearance of a second-rate steakhouse, and with no cars out front, I began questioning the wisdom of my reservation at this establishment (my first choice, the famous tomato greenhouse restaurant Fridheimar was fully booked). It didn’t help that the fam gave me some serious side eye. “It got great reviews!” I assured them as I tried to reassure myself. All qualms were allayed upon entering - the interior was decidedly Icelandic modern, there were other people in the restaurant (they’d parked in back), and I began to wonder if we were underdressed. The staff was lovely, and the menu looked great, as promised. Famished, we stayed on script and ordered a set of pizzas - and they were terrific. (Looking back, I regret not being more adventurous here as I’m sure anything we ordered would have been terrific.) While we ate, the rain had subsided, but our thirty minute scheduled stop turned out to be more like an hour fifteen.
The tomato greenhouses of Fridheimar
They are said to serve a mean tomato soup
Dan rushed us toward our first stop of our Golden Circle tour: Gullfoss - a massive waterfall on the massive Hvita river. Gullfoss means “Golden Waterfall” and puts the golden in Golden Circle. It was also the first place that we encountered tiny little gnats.
Gullfoss from above
Gullfoss
As we approached the lower viewing deck of the falls, we ran into an unexpected treat - friends! One of @mini.turbodb’s friends from elementary school (and one of my former math tutees) and her parents were also visiting Iceland on the way to a big European adventure. @mini.turbodb beamed seeing a fellow teenager, and the two of them bounced around the rocks, looking at the falls, and catching up. It was so nice to see familiar faces after a week and a half of seeing no one we knew. At this point though, our schedule was officially very off track, but friends are always worth it.
After a round of hugs and promises to reconnect once stateside, we headed to Geysir (the first - and the reason all geysers are called “geyser”) and its associate geothermic area. We arrived just in time to catch a glimpse of a geyser going off - and the look on @mini.turbodb’s face was priceless. “The sulfur smell doesn’t smell that bad anymore,” she commented as we passed various bubbling pots and steaming streams. Up here on the high plateau, on what felt like the top of the world, it was easy to understand how mythologies that involved trolls, witches, giants, and elves could come about. How else could one explain these weird phenomena? What must the Vikings have thought when they came upon these places? We watched, photographed, and recorded the geyser (Strokkur), shoeing away gnats, and in some cases, even blowing them off the camera lens.
It begins…
Waiting intently
Strokkur Geyser Erupts!
Happy Fam
Back at the car, it was time to get to our next attraction, Thingvellir. Having read a few Icelandic Sagas (or more than a few), I was really excited to see where so much of the early Viking action had gone down. Thingvellir is a special place to Icelanders - it is the place they chose to hold their annual government rendezvous, the first (or at least, an early precursor to) parliament, which they called the “Thing.”
It was here that representatives from every district would come to settle disputes, create law (as read by the lawgiver every year), and sometimes, to find suitable mates for their teenaged children.
Pivotal things happened at the Thing - punishments doled out, murders, duels, and big decisions were made and announced like converting the whole country at once to Christianity (with the caveat that they could totally still worship their old gods on the downlow). If that were not enough, it is also coincidentally, the exact place where the European and North American tectonic plates are pulling apart. It is here that Europe and America meet! But here, in the drizzle, with gnats flying around everywhere, all was calm and for my two companions, a little boring. They did not have visions of Viking “booths” set up every few feet and couldn’t practically smell the stink of the Vikings partying that always accompanied the Thing, or imagine the lawgiver standing on law rock trying to get everyone to listen the previous year’s proclamations. So I ran around gawking at each place, while they looked at me like I was a little crazier than usual. And I tried my best to keep it short by literally running. “And here’s where the drowned the witches! And over there is where the subcommittees met that made the real decisions! And here’s the law rock! Isn’t this cool?!?!” I sounded like I’d lost my mind.
Pulling apart
Deep in Thingvellir: Europe to the right, North America to the left, and at one time, a lot of Vikings in the middle
After a quick look at Oxfoss and the Ox river that ran through the north end of Thingvellir, it was time to go - the time pressure was on: we were now an hour and forty-five minutes behind schedule but we only had an hour and thirty-six minutes of buffer, and this time it mattered. We had 8pm dinner reservations at our night’s accommodations - Fossatun - and it wasn’t clear that there was anywhere else to eat in the vicinity if we missed our reservation (the kitchen was said to close at 8:30pm).
We made it in time (just a few minutes late) and we had the restaurant to ourselves (still glad for the reservation so they knew we were coming). As part of the reservation, we had to reserve our dinner order, so there were few surprises (and everything was delicious): A quiche and salad for me, while the other two split a burger and fish&chips. We even got dessert: carrot cake. Our view from dinner wasn’t bad either - we overlooked a beautiful waterfall (putting the foss in fossatun).
Veidifoss waterfall - the view from the restaurant at Fossatun
Our accommodations included access to the hot tubs, so despite the hour, we grabbed our suits, and jumped in. All was grand!
Our camping pod at Fossatun
Until it wasn’t. Our little cottage was super cute, looking practically like a hobbit house, but I shouldn’t have brushed aside the warning at the front desk about midges.
@mini.turbodb’s sleeping closet
@mini.turbodb bedded down in her closet at her end of the cabin, while we sat up for a bit at our end working on our computers. Every minute or two one of us would swat, then smack, and occasionally clap to catch what we both thought were just gnats - like those that had been “bugging” us all day. But some of them left a bloody smear when they got smacked. It was nothing, right? But then they never seemed to dissipate. We had No-see-ums of terror. The gap in the front door meant that we were left unprotected. We hoped that when we put away the bright lights of our computers that they would stop coming in with nothing to attract them. We stayed under the covers, boiling, so that there would be less for the flying vampires to munch. Every unfamiliar tingle sent our nerves rattling as it was likely a midge taking a nibble. We hoped that @mini.turbodb’s door was sealed well against the bugs (spoiler - it was not). I was restless, hot, and every touch on my skin had me jumping. At some point early in the night, I couldn’t take the heat and the bites, so I took my pillow, comforter (in Iceland, everyone gets their own), and eye mask, and headed for the car. Dan slept under a sheet, but it was still sweltering as he hid beneath it barely sleeping. The youngest slept soundly, as she always manages to do (except on airplanes), blissfully unaware of the bites she would discover all over her body in the coming days. The next day would seem longer than ever.
The Whole Story
