Sunday morning. 11 a.m. appointment. Breakfast.
When I booked
Alfholl, our bed and breakfast, breakfast came with an extra fee, how much I
don’t remember. But we decided as long
as we were having to pay for it, we might as well seek our morning meal
elsewhere.
It was our first
morning, also the day we were scheduled to take the “Golden Tour”, and it was Sunday. Reykjavik honors the Christian custom of
taking Sunday off, at least the part of Reykjavik where we stayed, and during
the off-season. All the little shops
that usually served food were closed as we walked around at 9 a.m.
We found a hotel
with a breakfast bar open. It was a lot
like the breakfast served at bed and breakfasts in the olden days, scrambled
eggs, bacon, sausage, various types of bread, fruit, juices, coffee, tea,
etc. Having dined, we walked the three
or four blocks to bus stop 1 where we would join the Golden Circle tour.
Like all things,
the decision to take our breakfast elsewhere had advantages and
disadvantages: we had a variety of
breakfasts, but we did not get to know anyone, seeing only the tourist servers. We saw our host when we checked in. He helped us make bus reservations to return to
the airport on the appointed day, tried (and failed) to get coveted
reservations to the fabled Blue Lagoon, helped haul our luggage upstairs to our
room. But then, we never saw him again.
Our bus was on
time and we were early. We watched the
birds in the pools that surround City Hall.
A shuttle bus
took us to the main bus depot, the same one we went to on arrival from the
airport. The attendants helped us board,
and after most of us were on, then they came to take our tickets, vouchers, or smart
phone pictures. Thoughtful, really,
rather than having everybody standing outside the bus door in the wind and
drizzle.
The first stop
was Þingvellir National Park (don’t ask me what that first letter is—English
translations usually substitute “th”, thingvellir). The park centers around some ancient ruins
from a thousand years ago where the Icelandic parliament met. We only saw that site in passing. The real attraction was a huge rift in the
lava where two tectonic plates separate.
The fault line runs for many of miles with
various degrees of separation. Where the
bus stops, the fault is yards (woops—meters) wide and deep.
On the bus trip, we went through miles of
open space with an occasional settlement or farm type dwelling. But when we reached the designated site,
things changed. While we experienced
some traffic enroute, at each site, a parking lot was crowded with cars and a
bunch of busses, enough that we had to take a close look at our bus before departing
to take in the scene so that we could get on the right bus at our assigned
departure time. Don’t be late! It’s an expensive taxi ride back to Reykjavik. Needless to say, the centers were crawling
with people, many natives taking advantage of a Sunday afternoon to see some of
the sights.
Our second stop was Geysir. Apparently, it’s where we get the word “geyser”,
Geysir being the first named hot water eruption from Mother Earth. Geysir is not as predictable as Old Faithful,
and perhaps not as spectacular, but it erupts much more frequently.
From the parking lot and tourist center,
we walked the hundred meters or so to the site.
Several pools of hot water and other steam spouts line the pathway. We were probably 15 minutes making our way
around the spout, and we saw two pretty sizable eruptions.
Our final stop was Gullfoss, a huge
waterfall. It sits in an exposed area,
pretty rugged, obviously, to have the waterfall. The sharp wind and occasional spit of rain
made for a pretty quick visit.
From Gullfoss, we took about a two-hour
bus trip back to Reykjavik. Coming and
going, we saw a lot of scenery, including mountaintops, glaciers, a snowstorm
progressing down a mountain pass, an industrial site or two, and some sheep and
horse ranches. Not much in the way of grain
fields. Iceland imports nearly all of
its grain needs.
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