Our tour guide reminded me of Micheal Caine (Alfred from the new Batman movies). Maybe it was his accent or his looks but I thought he was the perfect guide. Sadly, I forgot to write down his name.
This tour would take us on the classic Golden Circle stops which included the Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss Waterfall, Geysir hot spring, Haukadalur geothermal area, Hveragerdir earthquake town and the Faxi waterfall. The pick-up for this tour was at 7:30am and after our late night tour with Olafer, we were tired. But luckily, this tour was on a big charter bus and a total of 16 people so we were able to spread out and nap in between stops. I found it hard to close my eyes because I wanted to stare out at the scenery while we were driving. We passed an area that is the definition of "Fire and Ice." It's lava fields full of snow. So it looks like dark rocks being hugged by ice.
When we arrived at our first destination, Thingvellir National Park, it was pouring rain. Our tour guide told us the famous Icelandic quote "Think this is bad weather? Just wait 5 minutes." We waited but it just seemed to rain even harder. Thank goodness one of the layers we did pack was our handy dandy North Face Rain Jacket (best deal we ever bought-we sucked up and battled crowds day after Thanksgiving to get to The North Face Outlet and scored these batboys for $30-regularly $120).
Next, we walked outside the visitor's center (read: a wet walk) to see the place of Parliament. There's a canyon that we walked through and our guide said originally the people of Parliament wanted the Prime Minister to walk through the canyon on the way to the house. However, the secret service said "hell, no!" They said they'd have to worry about snipers every single day.
After the National Park, we went to see the Gullfoss Waterfall. Our guide told us the tale of this waterfall. It was originally owned by a farmer-Tomas. He was approached by a company who attempted to buy the waterfall to use for energy purposes. However, Tomas declined to sell the land the waterfall was located on. Later, Tomas had some money trouble and he sold the land to a fellow farmer and they made a gentleman's agreement that the other farmer would sell it back to Tomas once he was back on track financially. Well, the company that wanted the waterfall approached this other farmer and offered him a crapload of money and he sold it. So, the daughter of Tomas, Sigríður, walked into the city of Reykjavik (this was a week's worth walk in one direction) and tried to fight the sale of the waterfall. She went to court and rallied media about this whole ordeal. She had to walk back and forth into the city TWELVE times! In the end she lost in court. So Sigríður said publicly that she would rather jump off the waterfall and die than see it sold to a company. This is what generated enough attention to make this area a national park. Boy am I glad she did because it really is beautiful.
The Little Superheroes love waterfalls
After the Faxi waterfall, we had a surprise stop to see some Icelandic horses. I really liked this stop because I love the size of these horses.
After we left the church most of us were getting pretty tired and it was late in the afternoon. We only had one stop left and that was the Geothermal Power Plant. We took the short half hour tour and learned about geothermal energy in Iceland. It's amazing what this power plant can do. It's the world's second largest geothermal power plant. Guess where the largest one is located? California! Say what? That's what we said. Turns out it's in Northern California, close to San Francisco. The power plant in Iceland works to provide energy, water and heat to EVERY single home and business in the ENTIRE country.
This tour would take us on the classic Golden Circle stops which included the Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss Waterfall, Geysir hot spring, Haukadalur geothermal area, Hveragerdir earthquake town and the Faxi waterfall. The pick-up for this tour was at 7:30am and after our late night tour with Olafer, we were tired. But luckily, this tour was on a big charter bus and a total of 16 people so we were able to spread out and nap in between stops. I found it hard to close my eyes because I wanted to stare out at the scenery while we were driving. We passed an area that is the definition of "Fire and Ice." It's lava fields full of snow. So it looks like dark rocks being hugged by ice.
When we arrived at our first destination, Thingvellir National Park, it was pouring rain. Our tour guide told us the famous Icelandic quote "Think this is bad weather? Just wait 5 minutes." We waited but it just seemed to rain even harder. Thank goodness one of the layers we did pack was our handy dandy North Face Rain Jacket (best deal we ever bought-we sucked up and battled crowds day after Thanksgiving to get to The North Face Outlet and scored these batboys for $30-regularly $120).
Our guide showed us inside the visitor's center on the Iceland map where the tectonic plates are located and how they work to create earthquakes and make more land (one day Iceland might be a hop, skip and jump away from New York). 2 centimeters of the land expands every year by tectonic plate movement and the crevices fill with lava therefore expanding the land. However, every year Iceland loses 1.5 centimeters of the glacier because it melts (global warming anyone?), so overall Iceland grows a net of 0.5 centimeters every year.
Next, we walked outside the visitor's center (read: a wet walk) to see the place of Parliament. There's a canyon that we walked through and our guide said originally the people of Parliament wanted the Prime Minister to walk through the canyon on the way to the house. However, the secret service said "hell, no!" They said they'd have to worry about snipers every single day.
After the National Park, we went to see the Gullfoss Waterfall. Our guide told us the tale of this waterfall. It was originally owned by a farmer-Tomas. He was approached by a company who attempted to buy the waterfall to use for energy purposes. However, Tomas declined to sell the land the waterfall was located on. Later, Tomas had some money trouble and he sold the land to a fellow farmer and they made a gentleman's agreement that the other farmer would sell it back to Tomas once he was back on track financially. Well, the company that wanted the waterfall approached this other farmer and offered him a crapload of money and he sold it. So, the daughter of Tomas, Sigríður, walked into the city of Reykjavik (this was a week's worth walk in one direction) and tried to fight the sale of the waterfall. She went to court and rallied media about this whole ordeal. She had to walk back and forth into the city TWELVE times! In the end she lost in court. So Sigríður said publicly that she would rather jump off the waterfall and die than see it sold to a company. This is what generated enough attention to make this area a national park. Boy am I glad she did because it really is beautiful.
We walked down to the viewing center to see the waterfall and it was pouring rain again (of course) so we enjoyed the pounding of the waterfall before walking back to the visitor center and warmed up with some Icelandic Lamb Meat Stew (it's really yummy). We also broke down and purchased more warm clothes. Super Nel got a new beanie (he'd forgot to bring his today) and I bought another wool base layer. It was the difference between being freezing and uncomfortable and warm and happy. There's no price for that-ok there is a price and in Iceland it's pretty steep but worth it to keep going on the adventure.
Next, we went to the Geysir hot spring and geothermal area-this might have been our favorite part of the tour. The Geysir is HUGE and is supposedly the nephew to the original Geysir. The original Geysir stopped spitting out water a few years ago-every now and then it will spout but for the most part it's retired. The working Geysir was full of life and we had a blast trying to get a video of it erupting. It was funny to watch people get wet every time it blew up.
Our next stop was the Faxi waterfall. Faxi supposedly means horse's tail. I think this waterfall might be the biggest horses tail I've ever seen and it was gorgeous.
Next, we went to the Geysir hot spring and geothermal area-this might have been our favorite part of the tour. The Geysir is HUGE and is supposedly the nephew to the original Geysir. The original Geysir stopped spitting out water a few years ago-every now and then it will spout but for the most part it's retired. The working Geysir was full of life and we had a blast trying to get a video of it erupting. It was funny to watch people get wet every time it blew up.
Our tour guide said this waterfall is a favorite of the locals and that they enjoy coming with family on the weekends to picnic and drink a few bottles (his words, not mine). There is also a huge metal structure nearby that is divided into what looks like pie slices. It turns out that every spring, the farmers release their sheep to go "marinate" in the mountains. This means the sheep eat off the land and get fat and juicy (no steroids or force feeding of sheep in Iceland). Then in the spring, the sheep are all herded into this metal structure and sorted by farms. The farmers come to collect their sheep and they have a celebration (apparently there's more bottles that are opened as part of the celebrating). Then the sheep are taken back to the farm and turned into lamb stew....use your imagination for that one.
After the Faxi waterfall, we had a surprise stop to see some Icelandic horses. I really liked this stop because I love the size of these horses.
They almost look like a really big pony but smaller than a horse.
They were friendly, they would lick you and nibble your hand (sadly, I didn't have any treats). I learned that if I did have treats they wouldn't like carrots-instead they like fresh pieces of bread. These horses are bred, sold and very expensive. You see lots of them all over Iceland and they come in a variety of colors.
We stopped at a special church as our next destination. There is a scandal that goes along with this church. Our guide told us about the scandal on the way to the church. One thing that makes our tour guide so entertaining is his ability to tell us all these entertaining stories as part of the history. He played on the show "Scandal" and kept asking who likes a good piece of "juicy" gossip before telling the story. This one was about a Bishop who moved to this small Icelandic town with his daughter. He had a tutor come everyday to teach his daughter since she was a very bright young lady. However, some of the towns people began to gossip and some said that they saw the tutor going in to see the daughter at all hours of the night. You can imagine that not too many lessons were done in the evening unless it was a special night of astrology. The gossip spread and eventually reached the ears of the Bishop. So he had numerous heads of the church come into their town and had his daughter put her hand on the bible in front of all these men and swear that she did not have any relationship with the tutor that was inappropriate. She swore that her relationship was appropriate. However, nine months later she delivered a baby boy that looked very similar to the tutor.....Our guide said that after giving birth, the baby was taken away from the daughter by the Bishop and the daughter later died from illness. The Bishop felt guilty for what he had done to his daughter, so he decided to raise the baby. The child died before he was 9 years old. The Bishop went on to lead a very lonely life and stepped down as Bishop. A few years after that he passed away as well. Our guide did a vote of hands of who believed that the daughter was lying when she swore she hadn't done anything scandalous and most people raised their hands. However, our guide gave us an alternative theory-his own. He believes that the daughter did NOT do any scandalous. She was a very smart young woman and she was lucky to have such a good education given to her so he doesn't believe she would have put that education at risk. However, when her father forced her to swear in front of all those people she was so mad and embarrassed that later that night she called the tutor to her room for a late night astrology session and the rest as they say is history.
The church itself was very small, but lovely.
We stopped at a special church as our next destination. There is a scandal that goes along with this church. Our guide told us about the scandal on the way to the church. One thing that makes our tour guide so entertaining is his ability to tell us all these entertaining stories as part of the history. He played on the show "Scandal" and kept asking who likes a good piece of "juicy" gossip before telling the story. This one was about a Bishop who moved to this small Icelandic town with his daughter. He had a tutor come everyday to teach his daughter since she was a very bright young lady. However, some of the towns people began to gossip and some said that they saw the tutor going in to see the daughter at all hours of the night. You can imagine that not too many lessons were done in the evening unless it was a special night of astrology. The gossip spread and eventually reached the ears of the Bishop. So he had numerous heads of the church come into their town and had his daughter put her hand on the bible in front of all these men and swear that she did not have any relationship with the tutor that was inappropriate. She swore that her relationship was appropriate. However, nine months later she delivered a baby boy that looked very similar to the tutor.....Our guide said that after giving birth, the baby was taken away from the daughter by the Bishop and the daughter later died from illness. The Bishop felt guilty for what he had done to his daughter, so he decided to raise the baby. The child died before he was 9 years old. The Bishop went on to lead a very lonely life and stepped down as Bishop. A few years after that he passed away as well. Our guide did a vote of hands of who believed that the daughter was lying when she swore she hadn't done anything scandalous and most people raised their hands. However, our guide gave us an alternative theory-his own. He believes that the daughter did NOT do any scandalous. She was a very smart young woman and she was lucky to have such a good education given to her so he doesn't believe she would have put that education at risk. However, when her father forced her to swear in front of all those people she was so mad and embarrassed that later that night she called the tutor to her room for a late night astrology session and the rest as they say is history.
The church itself was very small, but lovely.
The artwork of the alter was a huge mosaic done by a female artist. She created Jesus not on a cross, but with his arms open in a scenic manner. This is supposed to represent Jesus as an open-minded person welcoming everyone into the church saying "all are welcome here."
At certain times the light would shine through the window and a rainbow fell on the alter.
The windows are a different story-they were also done by a female artist and the colored mosaic tiles tell stories. The colored pieces are put together in a very specific way that forms an ancient language. The top windows tell the tale of Jesus in Christianity and the bottom larger windows tell the story of Icelandic religion. I thought the windows were beautiful with the colors. If you stare at them long enough you can almost tell that they speak a language.
After we left the church most of us were getting pretty tired and it was late in the afternoon. We only had one stop left and that was the Geothermal Power Plant. We took the short half hour tour and learned about geothermal energy in Iceland. It's amazing what this power plant can do. It's the world's second largest geothermal power plant. Guess where the largest one is located? California! Say what? That's what we said. Turns out it's in Northern California, close to San Francisco. The power plant in Iceland works to provide energy, water and heat to EVERY single home and business in the ENTIRE country.
It's all provided at a very inexpensive price (the guide said that it's supposed to make up for the high prices in everything else). The floors of most homes are heated and this especially comes in handy in the bathroom after you shower. We learned that a machine digs down to the core of the Earth and this releases steam. The steam then goes through these generators and it's turned into energy and warm water. Then the tricky part is next, the steam is reinjected back into the Earth's core and the process starts again.
The geothermal plant has 7 huge generators that do this process. Every 5 years they turn one off to clean it and otherwise they run non-stop to supply energy to the country. They are currently working on trying to go even deeper into the Earth's core in order to get more steam for more energy. If this works, than other countries will hopefully try to use this same process. I hope we can do this for our entire country some day. Think about how amazing it would be to reuse energy this way? It's cleaner and better for our environment.
We had a great time on this tour and were really happy we didn't have to do any of the driving. Before we left our guide, we showed him our plans on the map for the rest of our time in Iceland and asked if he could recommend any small towns to stay at on our journey.
Then we went back to the hot dog stand for a yummy dog. Iceland puts this special brown mustard and yellow sauce on their hot dogs along with crunchy and fresh onions. All the flavors and combination of textures make it a very tasty meal and I'm not a huge hot dog lover. Super Nel loved the brown and yellow sauces so much, he had to find them in the grocery store and bring them back home with him in his luggage-along with a Fanta. Something about the soda Fanta in Europe-they taste way better. I don't even like that soda. However, in Europe it tastes amazing.
We decided to grab a quick drink at a local bar by our apartment before going to bed. Super Nel ordered a beer that came with a shot of local liquor called Brennivan. We knew that the Brennivan was a licorice based flavor. The shot was tiny, about half the size of a regular shot, but not even 5 minutes after drinking it, did we feel it. You felt warm all over and you started to get really happy. Super Nel said "quick, drink you beer so we can leave or else we won't find our way home."
Don't worry, we made it home. And we finished our beers.
Read about our adventures in driving in Iceland and spending the night in a Mountain Hut in the next blog post.
We had a great time on this tour and were really happy we didn't have to do any of the driving. Before we left our guide, we showed him our plans on the map for the rest of our time in Iceland and asked if he could recommend any small towns to stay at on our journey.
Then we went back to the hot dog stand for a yummy dog. Iceland puts this special brown mustard and yellow sauce on their hot dogs along with crunchy and fresh onions. All the flavors and combination of textures make it a very tasty meal and I'm not a huge hot dog lover. Super Nel loved the brown and yellow sauces so much, he had to find them in the grocery store and bring them back home with him in his luggage-along with a Fanta. Something about the soda Fanta in Europe-they taste way better. I don't even like that soda. However, in Europe it tastes amazing.
We decided to grab a quick drink at a local bar by our apartment before going to bed. Super Nel ordered a beer that came with a shot of local liquor called Brennivan. We knew that the Brennivan was a licorice based flavor. The shot was tiny, about half the size of a regular shot, but not even 5 minutes after drinking it, did we feel it. You felt warm all over and you started to get really happy. Super Nel said "quick, drink you beer so we can leave or else we won't find our way home."
Don't worry, we made it home. And we finished our beers.
Read about our adventures in driving in Iceland and spending the night in a Mountain Hut in the next blog post.
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