We
arrived at Keflavik
airport in the morning, bought an Iceland SIM card for Carrie’s phone and
picked up a rental car. Iceland
drives on the right side of the road same as the United States, but we do need to
use headlights all the time.
First
stop is to buy groceries at Bonus, so we looked for the pig with the black eye.
One of the things we bought was skyr, which is a tasty Icelandic product
similar to yogurt. So we ate a late breakfast of skyr, granola, and raisins in
the car.
Next
is Þingvellir National Park. Here the North American
and Eurasian tectonic plates collide above sea level, so you can see
the edges of the plates.
Þingvellir
is also the site where tribal leaders met yearly starting in 930 AD to govern
and established one of the two oldest parliaments in the world.
Carrie
is vegetarian, so we went to the Friðheimar restaurant for a late lunch. Iceland imports
much of its food, but this farm grows their own greenhouse tomatoes and makes a
very fresh tomato soup. Lunch is served in the greenhouse.
Kerið
is a volcanic crater lake that we hiked around.
Geysir
is Icelandic "to gush" and is the origin of the word geyser. Geysir
the geyser still erupts occasionally, but the most consistent geyser in the
area is Strokkur, which erupts about 50 feet high every 6-10 minutes. Some
springs have a bit of color and some bubble, so it is like Yellowstone
on a smaller scale.
Our
last sight for the day is Gulfoss, the golden falls, a 105-foot-high 750-foot-wide
2-step waterfall.
After
arriving at the bed-and-breakfast, Carrie made a cheese quesadilla for dinner. Bill
didn’t sleep much on the flight, so he just went to bed.
