Kathleen Fiske Travel: Our Last Stop, Reykjavik

We decided with the help of our hotel receptionist, Jetta, that a day long Golden Circle bus tour was a good investment especially since we had only one day. Here, Rick is waiting for the tour bus. It was a cold and windy day and I personally was wearing two t-shirts, a jean jacket, a fleece and a scarf. It was still cold. Surprisingly, Reykjavik is warmer than New York City in winter.

As the bus headed for our first stop, the landscape outside the window was stark, moody and gray, the sun attempting to shine through the wind blown clouds.

About the only traffic we experienced was this large herd of hundreds of sheep being moved from summer fields to winter grounds. We sat on the bus and watched from a distance in a long line of vehicles for maybe 15 minutes while they crossed the road.

The ground is covered with rubble and faults, the most unusual landscape I've ever seen--very beautiful in its own dramatic, rugged way. Iceland power plants drill holes in the ground to access steam to generate electricity and 90% of homes use this geothermal heat. There are small earthquakes here almost every day and houses are built to withstand magnitude 7 quakes which are as big as they get in Iceland. You might remember the major volcanic eruption here in 2010 which disrupted air traffic with massive clouds of ash for days...

The fault line you see below is located in the lobby of a snack shop where the mid-Atlantic ridge runs right under the shop. It is several feet below ground and covered with glass so visitors can witness the power of the now semi-dormant volcanoes. The building was planned to be four or five stories in height until this hot crevasse was discovered--now it is one story high.

The knitted items in this store are beautiful and expensive and we had delicious "meat soup" made with veggies, rice and lamb. Here, Rick decided to channel his inner Viking. Very scary....

Our next stop was an amazing geyser area with a hot spring throwing steam in to the air.

The Structif Geyser erupts every 5 minutes, unlike Old Faithful that makes you wait for an hour. :o)

Below are the amazingly huge 312 metre Guilfoss waterfalls where a kind stranger took our photo. Great glacial floods at the end of the Ice Age carved out its channel. In some instances, flash flood waters have filed the gorge below to overflowing--up to 70 meters deep in some places. In 1907, an Englishman wanted to harness the power of the Guilfoss for electricity generation but the owner, a local farmer, declined the offer saying "I will not sell my friend." It is likely that the Guikfoss was so named because of the golden evening hue which often colors its glacial waters.

We had hoped to get to the Blue Lagoon which was recommended to us by everyone who ever went to Iceland. BUT it was fully booked the day we were in town so we went to another thermal bath called Fontana. Here, we watched as a loaf of dark bread was buried in a hot bed for 24 hours. The loaf from the previous day had baked and we all had a taste of it....