Iceland - Golden Circle & Northern Lights -

Have these blog posts made you want to visit Iceland yet? I hope so! It is an amazing country that has so many beautiful things to see. This post is all about our third full day in Iceland when we traveled from the Snaefellsnes peninsula to the "Golden Circle."

Faxafoss

We started in Thingvellir National Park where there is a ton to see and because of this, there were tons of people there. This park is where Iceland's first parliament met in 930 AD. It is also home to the boundaries of two tectonic plates, the Eurasion and North American plates. (My inner geology nerd thought this was so cool to walk between two tectonic plates) You can even scuba dive between the two plates! While in the park, we walked to a waterfall called Oxarfoss. This was a really cool historical park but it wasn't necessarily my favorite spot of the trip.

Oxarfoss

Walking between the two tectonic plates

Our next spot was a perfect treat considering the weather... Ice cream! (LOL) There is a popular farm that has a restaurant and ice cream shop where you can enjoy your ice cream while seeing the cows that produced the milk for your ice cream. We loved this place so much that we stopped here twice :) The cows were so cute and the ice cream was delicious! On our way to get ice cream, the weather was so bad and the roads were even worse. So many cars were getting stuck in the snow, so Drew and some other people got out of their cars to help push cars out of the snow. Thankfully, we didn't get stuck in the snow once!

Our third stop of the day was to Haukadalur Geothermal Field, which was so incredible to see. There were lots of different hot springs around the area and then there is The Great Geysir, where the word geyser comes from. The Great Geysir hasn't erupted since the year 2000 but can shoot boiling hot water into the air up to 230 feet. Another geyser in the park is Strokkur, which erupts every 6-10 minutes and can shoot up to 130 feet. (Check out the video below of this geyser erupting!) We saw it erupt several times and we even came back here two days later before leaving the Golden Circle. If you want to learn more about the geysers in Iceland click here.

One of the hot springs in the area. Too hot to touch!

On our way to our next stop we passed some Icelandic horses just waiting to be petted and fed some horse treats. (There was a little cabinet where you put some money in a box and could get some pellets to feed them). This was one of my favorite things of the day. The horses were so cute! We stopped here twice :)

Our last stop of the day was Gullfoss, which is a huge cascading waterfall. We came back here again the same day we went back to the geysers. This is a very quick sight to see so we didn't spend long here. On our way to this waterfall there was a one lane bridge (Iceland loves their one lane bridges... I held my breath every time!) that passed over a beautiful river that flowed over rocks. I thought it was so beautiful with the snow all around.

As we were leaving the Golden Circle, as I mentioned above, we stopped to see the geyser and Gullfoss again. Next, we went to see one last waterfall and this was one of our favorites! Faxafoss is absolutely stunning and we practically had the place to ourselves. You could get super close to the falls and the sound was breathtaking. I would love to sit here by the falls and read a good book with some hot coffee. Doesn't that sound lovely?

As we headed to our next AirBnB (where we stayed for two nights), we stopped at the grocery store to pick up food for our meals for the next couple of days. Drew and I lived on PB&J sandwiches and Pringles for lunches, it was a great way to save money and time on our trip. This AirBnB wasn't nearly as nice as our first one but the private hot tub made up for this. It was truly in the middle of nowhere so we knew if we were going to see the northern lights then this was our chance. Our first night it was too cloudy but our second night, while enjoying the hot tub, we saw the lights!! It was almost midnight and we were about to head back inside when we started to see them. When they first start appearing it looks almost like white/grey wispy clouds and then the colors start to appear. We were SO excited! It was truly a memory that we will cherish our entire lives. Check out the photos below, which I don't think do the northern lights much justice. You'll just have to go to Iceland to see them for yourselves :)