Golden Circle

The next morning we attempt to print out the results of the negative

covid test just to have it in hand, but it doesn’t work out with the farmhouse.  So, we have our results on our phone and that will just have to be good enough.  We are doing the Golden Circle today, which is the main to do sites that everyone does as soon as they land in Reykjavik.  We get to skip Skogafoss

because we did it yesterday, it is cold and rainy today again.  We decide to skip getting out and actually walking around Selfoss which you can go behind.  We don’t want to get that wet again this early in the morning.  And we’re waterfalled out at this time.  We head on

 to a tiny town that has Bobby Fischer’s grave in it.  He came to live in Iceland after his last tournament was here and it’s like seeing Babe Ruth’s grave in the middle of nowhere.  This was the US’s only chess champion that was the best in the world….and he’s in a tiny churchyard in Iceland.  It’s weird, but we’re glad we get to see it.  I mean why rent a car and

do it yourself if you’re not going to go to out of the way places that you can’t do on a tour?  We head to the Kerio Crater which is a volcano that you can walk the rim of above a crystal blue lake like Crater Lake.  But it’s raining so hard, it doesn’t look very blue and we have no

   interest in walking around the rim….so, a few pics and moving on to Thingvellir.  Can’t actually spell it the Icelandic way because my keyboard won’t make that weird P unless I change it and will most likely never be able to change it back.

  This is the National Park in Iceland where the tectonic plates moving apart run through and where all of their government used to happen.  We get several waterfalls here, Law Rock, and beautiful scenery.  This is a place that you could spend weeks exploring….it’s sacrilege to see it in one hour….but can’t be helped because we’re on to Geysir.  This is the geyser that all of the others are named for.  The original Geysir doesn’t erupt much anymore, but the Stokkur geyser erupts every 5

minutes or so.  There’s hot springs around it and we make it into a two hour stop when it probably takes other people 10 minutes.  There’s a huge parking lot and plenty of things to walk around, climb up, but John says that he is done with climbing

stairs….I think Skogafoss did him in.  Oscar and I leave him on a bench at the geyser while we walk around and see all the hotpots.  The wind is up and it’s not raining, so sulphur smell isn’t overwhelming.  Oscar and I walk around and catch the geyser erupting from multiple viewpoints.  It’s kind of cool to try to catch it

on camera, but it seems like every time I actually catch it, it’s a dud eruption that doesn’t go high up into the air.  I finally get a good video from the side and we circle back around to John, hoping that he hasn’t moved.  He states that he has been

people watching and it’s fascinating.  He’s been watching some guy who isn’t happy with the way that his girlfriend or wife is taking his pic with the geyser.  A family where the mother wanted to catch the geyser behind her kids, but they kept

    turning around to look at it when it explodes….it’s funny to watch.  We stand right by the pool to see if we can tell when it’s going to explode and while the water heaves and lurches around, the eruption still always takes us by surprise.  We stay way longer than probably anyone else in this area and then head to their huge souvenir shop and go to the bathroom, buy all kinds of reminders or our trip to Iceland.  We leave tomorrow, it’s finally time to figure out what is going home with us.