The last part of our golden tour was to visit Thingvellir National Park which is a site in Iceland of great historical and geological importance. It is the place where the Mid-Atlantic ridge crests and is the place where continental drift can clearly be seen as the North American and Eurasian plates meet. This was also a place where perhaps the worlds first and oldest Parliament gathered to discuss Icelandic governance. They met every year at this place and it was a site of great cultural exchange for people to gather from all around Iceland. The governing council met for nearly a thousand years and it was also essential to lay the groundwork for Iceland's unique culture.
After driving around to see the sites of the Golden Circle and a rough previous night on a plane we were exhausted. Crashing early and awaking around 8am gave us a new day to explore more countryside. We enjoyed a spacious breakfast at our accommodations before setting off on a drive north. Soon as we knew we were going to Iceland, I wanted to check out Mt. Snaefell- site of "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne. So we embarked on a 2 hour scenic journey along the western Icelandic coast to Mt. Snaefells! Iceland is such a raw landscape, very young indeed!
This was a really neat area where the farmer had been able to get trees to grow beneath the waterfall!
Unfortunately for us, the summit of Mt Snaefells was shrouded in fog, but there was ample snow in many places! The mosses and lichens on the lava rocks look very uniform in color from afar, but up close they were immensely complex. Such a precarious existence vegetation has on the rocks and very cool to see soil forming!
Ashley and spent the better part of the day exploring the Mt. Snaefells area, it was full of really neat formations, small glacial streams and precarious loose rocky slopes. As the day was fading we begun our trip back to Reykjavik, and as luck would have it, the clouds lifting above and revealed the strata volcano from afar.
Along our drives we saw many sheep grazing comfortably in farmers fields. Ashley totally wanted to pet one, so we pulled over and she could feed it wildflower snacks. The fur was amazingly soft.
This last full adventurous day in Iceland wrapped up with a brief beer in downtown Reykjavik under rainy cloud cover and a cold breeze. We got up chipper Saturday morning in order to visit the infamous Blue Lagoon just before flying onward to Copenhagen. It was a pretty sweet spa-like experience and I think the hype about its skin-softening qualities are real! The Blue Lagoon totally put us into a nice vibe to continue to Denmark and mainland Europe.
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