On the plane to Reykjavik I watched the Hobbit, which is one of my favorite movies. My title quote comes from Gandalf who says it to Bilbo as they are leaving the shire. I thought it was quite fitting.
Today we landed in Reykjavik, ICELAND! We landed at 8:30am and were a little out of it. After getting very lost in the airport and wandering around near our hostel for about an hour looking for somewhere to eat, we were finally able to pull it together. Thankfully we saw some extremely fluffy stray cats (due to th fact that it's 37 degrees) which obviously boosted our mood.
At lunch we decided to look for a day trip we could go on, which we soon learned was going to be very difficult since they were all sold out. Uh oh. Rookie mistake. We finally decided to suck up our pride and go to the tourist office. They guy was immediately able to put us on a sold out tour for way cheaper than the online price. Boom. Within twenty minutes we were on a bus heading toward the majestic Golden Circle.
After a 2 hour bus ride of winding our way into the mountains, we stopped at the Geisyr Strokkur which we saw erupt about 4 times. The first time I was completely unprepared and was the only one to scream in the crowd of sightseers. Oopsies. The wind chill was so cold and basically whipped our cheeks off but it was so worth it.
Next we stopped at the Gulfoss waterfall which is the most magnificent thing I have ever seen.
It's a waterfall inside of a canyon and pictures could never do it justice. It was so cold that when we got close enough to take pictures, it felt like someone threw a handful of sand in my face. I quickly realized it was tiny bits of ice. Yikes.
The last thing we saw was super cool and unexpected. We drove through Thingvellir National Park which has one of the only places in the world where you can perfectly see the American and European tectonic plates completely separately. Our tour guide told us geologists come from all over the world to study this unique site. *wow*
A simple photo diagram:
We learned that this has happened because Iceland experiences over 1,000 earthquakes per month!! Most of them are too small to even feel but clearly the earth thinks it's enough to literally rip itself apart.
Our tour guide was awesome and dropped us off on the European side and we walked up the canyons to the Anerican side where he met us with the bus. We got to stop and see some amazing views of the mountains, lakes, and glaciers.
Tomorrow we'll be spending some time in the city then we're off to our next destination!
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