Monday, May 18 – The plan for today was to rent a car and drive to some of the famous sites to the south of Reykjavík. We left the hotel at 0750 and walked back to Baka Baka for breakfast. We made a point of taking some of the streets that we’d missed yesterday on the self-guided walking tour. Most of the streets we walked down today were residential and most of the homes were charming, similar to the homes in the previous posts about downtown. We did pass a Catholic Cathedral. The pretty building behind it looked like it may have been a school, and we weren’t sure if it was part of the church.
Near the cathedral were a couple of blocky, higher density buildings.
continued… we continued back down the hill towards the park with the lake. Close to the church, it was primarily colorful row homes. We weren’t sure if they were large single family homes or multifamily homes.
Within a couple of blocks, we came to the swankier part of town, with larger single family residences on large lots with big yards.
As we neared the park, the houses became more fancy.
continued… The bus dropped us off in front of the greenhouse and we went inside. The greenhouse was enormous. It seemed to go on forever with row after row of tomatoes.
Some of the rows had tables set up in between them for dining.
Friday, May 15 continued... When it was time to leave the Geothermal Park, we boarded the bus and set off. Here was a shot of one of the many rivers we passed over along the way. The photo also gives a good sense of the scenery.
On the way, we also passed an Icelandic horse farm. The driver slowed down so we could take photos. The guide said the breed specific to Iceland. They were notably smaller than other breeds of horses and had a unique gait that other breeds of horses didn’t have.
The next stop was the Gullfoss Waterfall, which translated to the Golden Falls Waterfall. The water in this river was ice melt from the Langjökull glacier. As we drove, the guide explained that the first environmental activist in Iceland was a woman who was trying to protect this waterfall from being turned into a geothermal dam. The bus parked in the visitor’s center, along with several busses ghat we recognized from our other stops. We exited the bus and followed a path down to the water. Here was a shot looking back at the visitor’s center.
Friday, May 15 continued… The Golden Circle was the most popular tour in Iceland, and these two busses were a private tour group only for the partners/families of the conference attendees. Keith was hoping there would be other teens aboard that he could hang out with, but the person closest in age was 20. And we knew that because he’d shared his age while telling us that he was overjoyed that he could legally drink alcohol here in Iceland (he was American, and in the US, the legal drinking age was 21).
As we left the city, the bus driver said that Reykjavík was originally a small fishing village surrounded by potato farms until 1940. In the midst of World War II, then British established a military base. A year later, the US took control of the base and operated it until 2006. Reykjavík grew up around the base to service the military staff. He told us a lot more about the history of Iceland, as well, but we didn’t remember the other details. He made a lot of jokes and was hilariously funny, so it was a fun ride.
The scenery looked like this for the majority of the drive. It was probably really green later in the spring and in the summer, but now the grass was just beginning to come back to life from winter dormancy.
Our first stop was the Visitor’s Center in the Thingvellir National Park. The park was a UNESCO World Heritage site, but we were surprised to find out it attained this honor for its history, not for its unique geology. As we’d read in the Perlan, In 930 AD, early settlers formed a representative-style parliament that met here. While the parliament was eventually moved to Reykjavík, the same parliament government still continues to this day, making Þingvellir the original site of the world’s longest-running continuous parliament.
