Reykjavik: Day 3

On our third day we took a tour of the Golden Circle. We waited in the hotel lobby for a shuttle bus to pick us up. There was a family from Connecticut (that we would see several times) also waiting for the same tour. The shuttle came and we took it to the depot where we got onto a bigger tour bus. The bus was pretty crowded, but the four of us all found seats together close to the front. It was an 8 hour tour. The guide said everything in English and then German because there were several Germans on-board. I heard her say that she didn’t know she was going to be using German and thought it was pretty rude when the same German guy kept correcting her. If I was the guide I would have just switched to English and made the German guy mad. Also at every stop there was another German guy who kept standing right behind me pushing me to get off faster (while I was helping my mom.) He was a complete douche and I let him know it.

We stopped in the town of Hveragerdi at a rest area. Then we went to the Skalholt Cathedral (which is on the site of the first Icelandic Church.) At the beginning of the tour it was snowing and then at the end it was raining and windy. After Skalholt we went to a waterfall (I don’t remember the name) and then went to the Gullfoss. The Gullfoss is where the Atlantic and European Tectonic plates meet. We had to walk about a mile from the bus to the Gullfoss. It was extremely windy to the point that it was pushing you. My mom and sister turned around and went inside the store before seeing it and I would have too, but I wanted to take a few pictures – which turned out really well.

After the Gullfoss we went to the Strokkur Geysir. We had lunch at the café at the gift shop (it was my first Icelandic cheeseburger and was alright although cold – I was too hungry to care and ate two.) We then walked along the geysirs and took pictures. We even walked up to the Strokkur Geysir right as it erupted. Our last stop was to Thingvellir. Thingvellir is the site where the Icelandic Parliament was held from the 1100s – 1700s before moving to Reykjavik. The guide and most passengers got out of the bus in the pouring rain and walked about 2 miles up hill while the rest of us rode the bus to the top and got off only to take pictures and go to the gift shop – yet I still got soaked.

We then made our way back to Reykjavik. The guide was asking where everyone wanted to get off and since we had a large bus that couldn’t go through most of the narrow city streets people were let off at intersections closest to their hotel. When it came to us we asked the guide to let us off at the closest taxi stand so we could take a taxi back to the hotel. After the guide talked to the driver she said that they would take us back to the depot where the driver would drive us to our hotel by the small shuttle bus (she even offered the same thing to the family from CT, but they were weird and randomly got off in the middle of nowhere.) We gave the guide and driver a tip because both did a good job and helped us. The driver spoke English really well (as did the guide of course.)

We were pretty tired from our day tour that we decided just to eat at the hotel’s restaurant. Again, most things were fish, but we all ordered steak “well done.” When it came out it was still bleeding. Usually I would send it back until they got it right, but being tired from jet-lag and the tour I just ate it. We then went up to our rooms where I spent the next two hours downloading my pictures onto Facebook and then packed.