Iceland Golden Circle Tour

Stopovers in Iceland with Golden Circle tour of Thingvellir National park, geysers, Gullfoss waterfall and a trip to the Blue Lagoon (return stop) with WOW airlines in October 2018

.Camille and David gave me a ride I got to the airport 4 hours early for my 1:00 a.m. flight. The flight itself was nice. Wow airlines is a budget carrier that flies through Iceland and I was looking forward to a 20 hour layover there. I had a window seat with an empty seat next to me. Most people slept through the whole flight. I think I got maybe an hour of sleep.
We arrived in Iceland to a very modern new airport. The weather was partly cloudy and about 36 degrees. I noticed there was lots of young people. I had rented a car and a hostel for my overnight stay. I went with Hertz, but when I got to the desk there was a long line and only two people checking in cars. After about an hour’s wait I got to the desk and there were no more cars. I settled on a small Nissan with a stick shift. It was just good to get out of the airport and onto the road. But I have not driven a stick shift in years and took a while to get used to. The road to Reykjavik was nice I noticed that there were many snow-capped mountains it seemed very beautiful in the sunlight. There seems to be no trees in Iceland just rock. Reykjavik very busy with traffic. I considered going downtown but wisely decided to go on the Golden Circle Drive. I had done research and knew that there was a Þingvellir National Park I wanted to visit plus geysers and waterfalls along the way. Iceland is a very geothermal area it is the separation between the European and American continent. I immediately started driving up over the mountains to where the ground was covered with snow. Þingvellir was an original settlement with a church and some row houses. It is built in a beautiful area on a lake where there are many fischers. The continents are literary splitting apart here. It is covered with streams and waterfalls. The hiking trails were very nice and I was undecided as to how much time I wanted to spend there. I probably walked two or three miles. There are many other tourist apparently they all had the same idea. I thought about having lunch there but decided there was too much to see and continued on to the geysers. It was about a 45-minute drive and I used my Google Maps to find it. However it was difficult in the car with the phone so I started using the built-in navigation in the car and found that all the crazy Icelandic names were already programmed into the GPS in the car. The geyser area is quite popular. It’s a geothermal area with many steam vents and one geyser that seems to erupt every 5 minutes it shoots out water about 50 to 70 meters into the air. They actually let you get quite close to the geyser and many people were taking pictures. I got a couple of good shots of the eruption. It was already starting to get dark I knew sunset was at 6:30 so I still wanted to see the waterfalls and downtown Reykjavik. I decided on the waterfalls which was a good decision Glosfloss is a large waterfall from the glacier melt. When you drive up it’s in a very narrow canyon and you have many trails up to the very edge of the waterfalls. It was very beautiful and the mist from The Falls was coming down on the grass and forming ice.
Since the sun was going down I began my drive back to Reykjavik. I thought I still had time to go downtown so I set my destination for the Old Town. As I got there the traffic and the buildings and the people got more and more crowded and it got darker and darker. The downtown area had no place to park and the traffic was terrible so I set out to find my hostel back by the airport. Google Maps was working good and when I got there I couldn’t find it so I walked around until I found it but by that time it was already 9 I went to the door and try to use the code they had sent me to get in but it didn’t work so I spent another 15 minutes trying to get in until they open the door and I found my room. I took a shower and went to bed it had been a long day. I was still worried though about waking up at 4 so that I wouldn’t miss my flight to Tel Aviv.