Getting a full nights rest, we check-out of the hotel and waited on our ride from Hertz to get our rental car. They didn't show up as scheduled but a quick call got them out there in time for us to hit the road by 1PM as planned. After a quick stop at a grocery store, we left Reykjavík behind and headed for Þhingvellir. Once in the area, we hit a tourism office for some insight into where to go and what to see. We decided to walk around the Almannagjá rift area and walk the rift to Oxarafoss (waterfall). The area was very picturesque and the rift between the North American and European plates was impressive. I only wish they left the walking areas more natural instead of cutting and laying the stone trail. We spent a good 2 hours at this area.
Next up was Geysir and the surrounding geothermal field. Stokkur, which erupted about every 8 minutes did not disappoint. Kind of funny to watch all the tourists waiting to snap their pictures. After an initial test run I was able to get a nice sequence of photos on the next spout. I quickly realized how important it was to take pictures with people or nearby objects to give all the great Icelandic landscape shots some point of reference for scale. The rest of the geothermal area was nice and didn't take much time to explore. We spent a total of about 40 minutes at this site.
Our final stop for the day was Gullfoss (waterfalls). After hearing numerous stories about how they can be a bit underwhelming, I found the site quite beautiful. A lot of this had to do with timing. The late afternoon lighting was perfect against the waterfalls. A short walk down some stairs gave us a great view of the falls from many different angles. I captured several nice rainbows against the waterfalls.This night found as at the Hotel Hekla farmhouse. Decent accommodations where we could see the Hekla volcano in the distance when it wasn't covered by clouds. We decided to have the farmhouse dinner this night and paid about $60 for the privilege. The "fish stew" was really mostly potatoes mixed with cheese and fish. A vegetable and a beer rounded out the meal. From this point on we decided we'd skip most of the farmhouse dinners for cheaper alternatives. Here we also discovered the a "hot pot" is simply another name for hot tub / jacuzzi, not some natural hot spring. We got our first dose of really brisk air as the temperature dropped near freezing that night.
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