Robert's Travels

This was the day our Icelandic road trip really started. We ate a quick breakfast at the AirBnB, packed up the car and were on the road shortly after 9 AM. The weather was overcast and slightly drizzling, however the sun was poking through the clouds so we were optimistic that the day would clear up. We got onto the road and drove towards Þingvellir National Park.

Þingvellir is a national historic site, located just north of Þingvallavatn. The site was the location of the Althing, the national parliament of Iceland, that was established there in 930 AD. The lake, Þingvallavatn, sits at the meeting point of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates.

We arrived at Þingvellir to cloudy but dry conditions. We walked around the site, seeing not just the Althing but also walking to Öxarárfoss (a waterfall that is short walk north). We then walked down towards the lake, passing by a church. When you reach the lake, you are able to walk to an area called Silfra, which is the rift between the tectonic plates, however unless you are scuba diving you can’t really see anything. We took some photos, then returned to the car and continued on.

The next stop on our trip was about 1.5 hours away, and it was a volcanic crater named Kerið. The rain had started coming down lightly while we were walking around the caldera, so we only walked around half before starting the hike down to the small lake that formed at the bottom. We hiked around the perimeter of the lake, captured a few photos, and then got back into the car.

By this point it was after 2 PM, and we were all getting hungry, so we kept an eye out as we drove and decided to stop at the first restaurant we encountered for lunch. That ended up being Restaurant Mika, in Skólabraut. I had a decent prosciutto pizza. We didn’t stay too long, as we had many more sites to see, so after eating we quickly got back into the car and continued.

The next stop on the trip was Strokkur, a fountain geyser located just off the road in Selfoss. The walk to the geyser was short, maybe 5 minutes, and on the path to the geyser you can see water bubbling out of the ground and forming small streams. There are many warnings not to touch the water, since it comes out of the ground at a temperature close to 80°C. The Strokkur geyser erupts every 8 minutes or so, so we did not have to wait long for the next eruption. The water plume went higher than I think any of us were expecting; luckily we stood on the windward side of the geyser and therefore did not get wet during the eruption.

After returning to the car, we continued on. Our next destination was the Gullfoss waterfall, a two-tiered waterfall on the Olfusa river. The rain had started up again when we arrived, so after taking a few photos from the viewing platform near the parking lot we quickly climbed the stairs and viewed the waterfall from the top of the gorge that the river runs through. We got some good photos here, and decided against walking right down to the viewing platform beside the waterfall as it was engulfed in the mist of the waterfall.

The last site of the day was a natural pool named the Secret Lagoon in Flúðir. This natural pool is fed by nearby hot spring, and was a very relaxing way to end a busy day of vacationing. There was a small geyser in one corner of the pool that we could watch erupt while swimming. It was more of a hot tub than a pool - people were not doing laps, simply lounging in the heat. We arrived just after 5:15 PM, and spent about an hour in the pool. The temperature of the pool was approximately 38°C, which is about that of a normal hot tub. The closer you were to the edge of the pool the warmer it was - the hot springs fed into the pool at the edges.

After rinsing off and getting dressed, we looked around for a place to eat and found an Ethiopian restaurant named Minilik just in Flúðir. We had a delicious meal here - while it wasn’t a traditional Icelandic meal, it was still very tasty. The meal took about 2 hours, so we left the restaurant around 8:30 PM and continued on to our next AirBnB in Hella. The drive there was around 45 minutes, and by the time we arrived everyone in the car was completely exhausted. We quickly settled into our rooms and went to sleep.