May 21

We had a solid sleep and awoke a bit groggy from the time change.  After breakfast we wandered around the town for awhile and returned to the hotel for our tour pickup.  We had a very interesting 6 hour tour with an excellent guide who gave us a lot of information about Iceland in general as well as explaining the areas we passed through.  We passed by several geothermal power stations, a ski area that isn’t well used due to lack of snow and several volcanos.  Iceland has the most active volcanoes in Europe and sits on the convergence of the Eurasian & North American Tectonic Plates.  We drove over the 7 km convergence area later in the tour and saw where the “no man’s land” in between is sinking.  There are hundreds of horses in the fields and the sheep have just been let out of their winter indoor areas for open grazing.  We passed by an area with elf houses, small lava rocks with a wooden entry door.  The Icelanders still believe in elves and there is actually an official Government negotiator to resolve issues between humans and elves & hidden people.

Our first stop was at Gullfossen, or Golden Waterfall, so named because of the rainbow created in the mist.  It’s a large double tier falls and supposedly the largest falls in Europe.  It was windy & cold at that stop.  Behind the falls we could see a huge glacier whose unpronounceable name I didn’t write down.

A few km further on, we stopped at the World’s first discovered geyser site.  There is one geyser that erupts every 5 minutes or so, up to about 30 meters high, and a second that erupts occasionally.  When they were discovered, well before Yellowstone’s Old Faithful, nobody knew what to think of them and many theories abounded.  The visitor center had a good interactive museum covering geysers and volcanoes.

We took a different route back towards Reykjavik and passed a large lake that is filled 95% from its bed.  It’s crystal clear and objects can be seen as deep as 65 meters.  It’s the home of many species of birds and contains Arctic Char and trout.  We made an unscheduled stop at Pingvelli in Pingvellir National Park, the original site of the Iceland’s Parliament, the World’s oldest continuous parliament which was established in 930AD.  After another stop at a scenic overlook we headed back to Reykjavik.

We walked to the town center and had dinner at The Fish Market, an upscale seafood & meat restaurant.  We started by sharing a bowl of lobster soup which had 2 lobster tails in it.  Pat had the king crab claws appetizer and I had a lamb fillet.  They give you so much food that we were both overstuffed.  We returned to our hotel around 10:30pm with the sun still shining.