Yesterday was a wonderful day. We left around 10 for our “Hot Golden Circle” tour with Gateway to Iceland. It was fantastic.

Our first stop for pictures on the way to Þingvellir

 Some wildflowers on the ground

A driving photo, so it's not entirely in focus. But the landscape was just beautiful. 

 Because Iceland sits on the mid-Atlantic ridge, it is geologically very active. There are hot springs and geysers all over the country.

Wild thyme. This grows all over here. 

Our second stop for photos. 

The ground is covered with moss--maybe 6 inches thick. Only the top layer is living. The bottom layer turns into soil. This was very soft and springy to walk on.

An interesting plant.

A failed attempt to capture the fields of purple flowers.

 Our third stop for pictures. 

We first drove for quite a while out to Þingvellir, a national park. Þingvellir (pronounced thing-vell-ir) is the place of the first Icelandic parliament, which was held in 930 A.D. Iceland has had the longest functioning parliament in the world (from 930 until now).

The mid-atlantic ridge. One of three large cracks traveling through Iceland. They are expanding each year by about an inch. 

The headwaters of the lake next to Þingvellir.

 The path down to Þingvellir.

Þingvellir!

Þingvellir was just beautiful. After yesterday’s tour outside of the city, I am in love with Iceland. It is just gorgeous. If I could have a summer home in Þingvellir I would be really happy.

 Some beautiful plants by the road.

Purple flowers. For Anna. 

 Looking down the river to the church and guesthouses. You can see where people have thrown coins into the water.

I'm pretty sure that even my poor photography skills aren't ruining these. So that should serve as a fair indicator of how beautiful Iceland is. 

 Yet another beautiful pool. You can see the coins on the bottom. This water is around 12 feet deep, and crystal clear. The water on the other side of the bridge was 20-30 feet deep, and just as clear. But my photo didn't turn out as well. 

Oh and apparently, Iceland was not nearly as cold when it was first settled as it is now. Our guide told us that the globe was in a warm stage when the Vikings first came, and they were able to grow a lot of crops here, such as corn and wheat. It was that way for the first several hundred years, and then the globe entered into a mini ice age, which we are now coming out of.

The next place we went was Gullfoss, which is a giant waterfall fairly close to Þingvellir. We had around an hour there, and I could have easily taken two or three hours. One corner of the falls pours down into a crevice, and the mist from the impact shoots up in a column from that corner. I tried to capture it on camera, but it was hard to take everything from an experience and fit it onto film.

You can see here how it pours down into a gorge. But the mist in the picture doesn't do the magic of the mist in real life justice.

The next three are of the upper falls. 

Pretty flowers. 

The distant peaks on the way to the restaurant above the falls. 

There is a restaurant above the falls where we ate. Our guide, Gummi, said that their vegetable soup is some of the best in Southern Iceland. And it was incredible. It was the perfect meal. The nice thing with this restaurant is that when your soup bowl is empty or when your bread runs out, you can just go get more. They don’t have a limit on refills.

We next went to Haukadalur, a geothermal area. There are active geysers there, and we stood watching them go off for around a half an hour. It was fascinating.

The next two pictures are of two connected hot springs. They are different colors because the water temperature is different!

This is geyser Strokkur. The most active one where we were. 

The area around Strokkur. 

One interesting thing: about 60-65% of Icelanders live in Reykjavik and its surrounding areas. All of Reykjavik’s hot water is pumped in from hot springs outside the city. So it costs nothing to heat your water. In addition, the water that is pumped in is used in the central heating in the houses. So no one has to pay for heating. (And no one pays for air conditioning either, because they can just open their windows.)

We stopped at a lovely little waterfall. A lot of Icelanders don't even know it exists. We felt very lucky. 

To the left of the falls, you can see a salmon bridge. 

A pen for separating sheep near the falls. 

A poor attempt at capturing the landscape. Iceland is fascinating, because it seems like every ten miles or so that the landscape changes significantly. 

Lastly, we went to the Secret Lagoon hot pool area. It was the site of the first pool in Iceland. They have filled the bottom in with gravel and turned it into a hot pool now. We soaked for an hour. I didn't get any pictures, though. 

Gummi, our guide, was incredible. He is very knowledgeable about Iceland. I wish I had time to write down everything we learned from him.

Last night we ate dinner at the Viking Restaurant that is in Hafnarfjöður, the city where we are staying outside of Reykjavik. It was fun, but the food wasn’t as good as some of the other places we have been.

I got 11.5 hours of sleep last night, so I’m feeling really good this morning. I’m grateful, because I kept falling asleep randomly while we were driving yesterday.

Our walk home from dinner. I took these around 10 p.m.