Day 3--Golden Circle Scenic Wonders

Yesterday I struggled to ge myself around the city with the buses, but today I just showed up to my three tours and let the guides cart me around. That was nice and much more relaxing. First was the puffin tour. It was very neat to see the puffins in their summer nesting ground on an island 30 minutes from the city harbor.  They flew very quickly past our boat. I also saw eider ducks and cormorants.

Here´s a puffin, if you weren´t sure what they looked like. Icelanders do eat them. The catch them by standing on a cliff edge with a net on the end of a long pole, and catch them as they fly by. 






Next was the bike tour of the city. This was two hours of cycling past the tiny basalt parliament building, the former prime minister´s house --right on a regular street--and the current prime minister´s office--also right on the street, without any appearance of security.




Iceland has just 320,000 inhabitants, with one third of them in the capital city. I think they have a bit of an inferiority complex. One bus driver randomly asked me if I thought Iceland was good. I do, fortunately.  Everything is pretty small here. The tallest, biggest church wouldn´t rate outside of Iceland, though it is pretty, and the city itself seems smaller than a state capital, and its government buildings are certainly smaller than a state capital´s.

But their university costs just 300 dollars a term and has a great reputation--a good reason to learn Icelandic!




I paused for a lunch of a very traditional, slightly salty, rich lobster soup--lobster meat melted in my mouth--then on to the final tour pickup. I was one of just six passengers in a small van that took the famous Golden Circle tour. All the tour groups run this, and the Icelander I met yesterday said Icelanders do it too, just they take their own cars.

It is a ring of beautiful sights, such as the geothermal power plants they are very proud of, one amazing waterfall, and another that would seem amazing if you hadn´t just seen the Golden Falls. Also a crater, a geyser, and a general tour of the area.

the law reader stood on the knoll to maximize the acustics

My absolute favorite stop was Thingvellir. This is the historic site of the first Icelandic Parliament where the law speaker would speak out the law--he´d memorized it--to the assembled chieftans. Those in attendance would party, mingle, and brawl camped out nearby on a gorgeous plain. They chose an amazing place. The combination of waterfall sound, lazy creek below, and the beautiful lichen made it perfect. I could have hiked here for hours.











We took a nice long walk through the area, and I tried to soak it all up. Everywhere I looked I saw great beauty.  Sadly, the pictures fail to capture the 3D nature of the landscape.




The stone here is amazing. Lichen, not grass, takes over the lava fields and climbs over the basalt. In places it is very thick, like colorful icing smeared over the rocks, rounding their edges. There are no brilliant colors, but the overall effect of a huge landscape looking like this makes it intense.

In case you don´t know, the Icelanders talk about the time of their Settlement, that being 874. This was the year the Vikings--they pronounce it wikings--left Norway and stayed on the island to stay. They don´t care to count the Irish monks who had lived here before that, probably because the current Icelanders´Nordic ancestors had chased out the monks. Plus, the monks didn´t really leave any legacy as far as decendants goes, so they don´t get a say.



The guide kept reeling off different types of volcanoes we were driving by, and they seemed to make sense to her. If Iceland is small in population and world recognition, they can certainly take joy in their scenery.  

Icelandic ponies are small and genetically unique

 Girls, I doubt I´ll see any animals when I get to Germany tomorrow, so do enjoy them here!!