The first full day in Iceland was spent doing the main tourist sites that everyone sees when they visit Iceland: Gullfoss, Geysir, and Thingvellir. To make things more interesting, I took a scenic route to Gullfoss using a 4x4 road.
That took considerably longer than planned because of the bumpiness driving for miles through lava fields. It also involved a couple of stream crossings that weren't on my map (makes me wonder how big the ones that make it on the map are).
Gullfoss is as you would expect, a giant waterfall. The upper viewpoint definitely gives a better view, even though most of the tourists go to the lower viewpoint.
Next stop was Geysir to see the geyser.
Thankfully, the geyser goes off every 5-10min, so there was not a lot of waiting around to see it. It goes quite high and is justifiably a major attraction. All around the area are various boiling pots and hot springs bubbling up. The whole place reeks of sulfur.
Watching people in a place like that is amusing. There are ropes to keep people on the path, signs everywhere warning of very hot water. Still, people just walk right over the ropes and go right up to the edge of things. Surely a geyser would never go off while your head was leaning over it, or the ground near a boiling pot crumble and drop you in scalding water. And every single person seems to look at a pool of boiling water (with a sign that says it is boiling), wonder aloud if the water is hot, stick their hand in it, yelp, and declare it really is hot. I would have thought all the steam would have given it away.
Next stop was Thingvellir National Park. This is an important place in Iceland, as it is the location of the law rock where the predecessor of the parliament used to meet back in ancient times. The law rock is what you would expect, a big rock.
Interestingly, it happens to be right on the fissure between the North American and Eurasion tectonic plates. The North American plate towers behind the rock. Clearly, the North American tectonic plate is better.
There are also several other interesting sites to see in the park: a waterfall, a nice water-filled gorge, and a lake.
Once back in Reykjavik, I could get into my parking lot because all the streets downtown were blocked off. Eventually, I gave up and parked in the harbor, but still had no idea what was going on. I figured I might as well go out an investigate. Turns out that there was a culture festival going on in conjunction with the marathon that had been earlier in the day. The main streets were jammed. I am sure all of Reykjavik was there. There were two stages with bands and many of the bars had little stages setup with live music. I spent the evening doing what everyone else seemed to be doing, walking up and down the street, stopping when a band sounded good, moving on to the next one, and repeating. Reykjavik is the kind of city where the mom with the kid eating cotton candy is standing next to the tattooed guy with body piercings watching the punk rock band made up of guys in plaid. It was a lot of fun, and the music was quite good. Once I started getting tired and decided to head back to the hotel, I noticed that there was a huge crowd gathered around the harbor. Naturally, I had to investigate. The reaon was a fireworks display was about to go off from the harbor to close out the night. I had been a bit disappointed that I was missing the fireworks in Scheveningen this year, so I was glad to be seeing some. And, these fireworks were far better than any I have seen in Scheveningen. Finally, after all the music, all the walking, and the fireworks, I went back to the hotel and went to bed.
