An 8am start in order to sort out rental car and have breakfast. (The sausage, egg, beans and weird-cold-potato-cubes were tolerable, but Sam made an exciting discovery: muesli, yogurt and watermelon makes a refreshing breakfast.)
Theory: “golden hour” lasts all day here. At this time of year, even in the afternoon the sun is low in the sky, giving you that lovely near-dusk look.
Packed cameras, tripods, mp3 recorder, spare batteries, sweets, bottles of water, maps, plenty of extra layers. 12 hours and 500km later, we had seen…
- The lake and nature park of Þingvellir (the whole country looks like a nature park to me)
- The geyser at Geysir (the one which lends its name to all the worlds geysers)
- The (huge) waterfall at Gullfoss (with amazing ice formations thanks to the spray)
- Ate another amazing hotdog
- Keriđ crater (water-filled dead volcano)
- Seljalansfoss (tall skinny one)
- Skogafoss (shorter, fatter one)
- Vik (town on South coast with a beach of black volcanic sand)
- Passes the greenhouse village all nicely lit up
- Stopped at a geothermal power station to take long exposure pictures (and got asked “what are you doing here?” by a security guard)
- Drove around for a while following the pillar of light which is the John Lennon memorial. Eventually found it (and got some mediocre photos of a spectacular sight)
Back to the hotel room and paid 500ISK (a little under £5) for 1 hour of wifi to upload photos and check email. Strange, when it’s free in every bar. The Airwaves music festival starts tomorrow. Very exciting.