I wrote about my Icelandic friend Asi in an earlier post. We met up a few days after the first meeting and went out for lunch at the Grillmarkaðurinn or the “Grill Market” where I had previously made a reservation to visit on my own. Having company was great. 🙂
Very good draft!
During my trip to Reykjavik, Iceland, I was posting photos on facebook and updating my status when I noticed that one of my facebook friends seemed to be visiting the city at the same time and she wasn’t just any facebook friends but a close friend from elementary school in Boston. The school was actually in Chestnut Hill, which is both Brookline and Newton, outside of Boston, and we were two new girls in a class of ten girls in the sixth grade when we met. Now, what is the likelihood that we would both be spending time in Reykjavik in the same week on vacation?! I mean I travel a lot and my friend, Lida, who’s been in the travel industry likes to travel but we’re not talking about New York or Paris. We were in Reykjavik!
We managed to hook up. Thank you, facebook.
We were to meet here, the Starbucks of Iceland, but Lida had gone to another branch of the same coffee shop!! But we met up at the end.
Yay!! Saw each other for the first time in about 40 years. How about that.
The final stop for the “Golden Circle” tour of Iceland was a UNESCO designated World Heritage site of Þingvellir National Park. We had very little time and it was so windy with rain mixed into it, it was difficult to appreciate what the site had to offer. The fact that it was situated over the tectonic plates of the North American and European continents where they continue to slide apart from each other was quite fascinating and we saw some signs of that from the tour bus but really we needed more time and better weather to explore.
The second stop in the Golden Circle Tour was the Gullfoss Waterfall. No words needed. Have never been to the Niagara Falls and since Japanese waterfalls tend to be long rather than wide, I was in awe.
The first real stop, apart from the tomato farm, on the “Golden Circle Tour” was to see the “geysers“, amazing eruptions of hot springs in beautiful colors.
But first, the warnings.
The bigger geysers have names.
The biggest active geyser, Strokkur
How active Strokkur is.
And this happens every 10 minutes or so.
Here is the bigger or the biggest dormant geyser from which the name of the phenomenon came.
Some pictograms to raise your awareness.
A blog by Ayako Mathies 