Day 40 - Reykjavik: Golden Circle and Waterfalls Tour

Today we left the city for a tour that went north and included Pingvallavatn, Geysers, waterfalls, a tomato farm, and a volcanic crater.

Reykjavik means “Smoking Bay” named due to all the geothermal activity in Iceland. It is the northern most capital city in the world, farther north than Nuuk, Greenland. The reason Iceland is inhabitable is due to the warm air that comes from the Gulf Stream of Mexico. We know Iceland is very far north and on the winter solstice, there is only 4 hours of daylight. Iceland is flush with water and it is drinkable.

Iceland sits on the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. It is the only place in the world where you can see those two tectonic plates and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge above ground.

The Eurasian plate is on the right and the North American plate is on the left behind Martha.

There is also a small waterfall nearby and Linda and I hiked around to see it.

We also hit a place where they bake rye bread in the ground (I know, right?) and a dairy that made the best ice cream!

We moved on to the Geyser farm, ok they don’t call it a farm, but there were a bunch of geysers in the area. We did get the money shot though!

And then we went to the Gullfoss Waterfall. OMG it was soooo beautiful. I’m just dropping the pictures.

Then it was off to Fridheimar Greenhouse for lunch. Fridheimar is Iceland’s most unique tomato farm, offering lunch right in the greenhouse. They thrive on their tomato soup served with freshly baked bread and cucumber salsa. This is a family run business, and they hand pick 2 tons of tomatoes per day. There are 3 different types of tomatoes. They have tomato drinks, salads, pizzas, and anything else they can think of, lol. And, there are horses too. Fun fact, if you send a horse out of Iceland to race elsewhere, they can never return. It’s a one way journey for any animal out of the country. They import bees to pollinate the tomato plants - apparently the Queen and the females do all of the work, the males, not so much!

Oh and the horse is just laying down, weird, but true.

Lastly, we visited a 3,000 year old volcanic crater. 3,000 = 1 million plus days. How do we even wrap our heads around that. I walked around the crater with Linda and Debbie and we took some pics of Martha, Reed, and Lorenzo on the other side!

Ohhh we cannot forget LeRoy, the best Islandic tour guide ever! Especially for a guy from the The Netherlands

And we went to dinner across our square and guess what, there was a cat! Evidently he is a famous cat with his own insta account. Actually, we met him yesterday hanging out on a wool blanket in one of the stores. We didn’t know he was famous then.

And at 11:30 it was still light!