Day 6 - Iceland day 1
Having recuperated a bit on a day at sea, we also had a sort-of slow morning on board, as were not due into port until 12:30. Of course, we were early, so I ended up rushing.
However, I recovered, because .... ICELAND!!!!!!!
This was truly just amazing.
DH was in charge of sorting out our private Golden Circle tour (again- we didn't go through Big Mouse). I confess I didn't pay much attention to the details, so I was as surprised as the kids when we were led to our ride.
Voila:
To be clear, Conor is not a short 10 year old. Those tires are almost as big as he is. I was also confused as to why we needed this particular vehicle, but that will become clear later.
Anyhow, our guide, Skully, was great, and, well, it was always easy to find our ride in the parking lots.
So, I'll try to sum up the Golden Circle tour - this is probably the usual tour many people do, but please don't think that makes it ordinary. It was UNREAL. Amazing. Awesome. I have so many photos, it's hard for me to pick some to post.
However, I'll try!
The photo above is from our first stop- just a small store, really, with coffee and bathrooms. We stopped here because we'd have a long-ish stretch before another break for food.
However, even before we got there.. the scenery was amazing. This photo is just from my phone, through a window.
There are lots of geothermal areas- so lots of cool, otherwordly steam. "Like we're on another planet, Mom!" - that was about right.
Anyhow, the scenery was cool... but then we got to Kerið.
Kerið is a volcanic crater lake- and it's just stunning. It's a bit of a hike to get up and around, but not bad at all. There is a longer way down if you want to go further down, but we found the top sufficiently amazing.
The colours are just incredible. DH has a good macro lens, so he got a few neat pics of local plant life.
At this point, it was cool (like 10 degrees Celsius) and a bit drizzly, but not bad at all. You can see that Conor is decked out in layers, like any cool (sorry!) Canadian... so he had on a t-shirt, then a warm pullover (featured later), then his real rain jacket- that's about what we all did. We had rain pants for all, but it wasn't raining or cold enough for that. Most of us had mittens or gloves, though some of us who were 10 kept forgetting them in the beast of a vehicle we drove around in.
We had an odd hiccup here- our vehicle had somehow rolled a bit while parked and gently nudged someone's rental car- no damage and no injuries, but we had a bit of a delay while things were being figured out. In the middle of all this, in a surreal fashion, my cell phone rang and it turned out to be Conor's piano teacher calling to sort out fall lessons.
With that all out of the way... we headed off to a small waterfall, which was nice enough but as it was far less impressive than what came next, I won't use up my photo allotment on those pics. We did all use the bathroom at the little diner, though.
This was a day of many stops... so, next up was a stop to see the Geysir geysers. (That is not a typo.)
Unfortunately, even though DH did his best -we didn't get any great photos of the actual big geyser doing it's thing. However, the whole place was kind of cool... lots of this kind of thing happening.
At this point, the sun came out! Iceland had barely had any sun for weeks ... but we lucked out. After yet another bathroom break and a hunt for souvenirs, we hit the road again.
We had a short drive to visit some lovely Icelandic residents... ponies!
These chaps were very nice- and chill. We enjoyed the sun and fed them a bit, and then headed off to Gullfoss - which deserves almost an entire post unto itself, so I'll stop here.
I was trying to figure out the timing of this whole day, when I belatedly remembered that my photos have time stamps. Yes, genius am I.
So- basically- we were on the road right at 12:30 - so clearly we got in at least an hour before that, as it takes the usual amount of time to get off the ship, etc. Stop for first snacks was at 1:00. Crater was at about 1:30 (including the short amount of walking to get to the top) and with our delay in the parking lot, we were at the small waterfall by 2:45. Geysers were at about 3:00 ish, then ponies at about 4:00.
We did not feel rushed at any point- none of these things needed us to be at a particular location at a particular time. We basically decided how long we wanted to spend at each place, guided by Skully. At the actual locations, he mostly just gave us tips as to what to see, and then left us on our own, with a rough agreed upon time to meet up again, and where.
Hope that helps the planners. We still had a lot in store for this day... so stay tuned!