Today we headed to two of the major attractions in Iceland, both part of the Golden Circle. We started at Gullfoss:
That’s taken from the upper viewing area. Here’s a shot from the end of the lower path you can see in the picture above:
The end of the lower path has some natural stones to climb. Be careful, as they are always wet:
There are actually two parking areas: the upper lot, which is much larger and is next to the visitor’s center; and the lower lot, which gets you right to the falls. Google maps handles this very well- Enter “Gullfoss Falls” to get to the lower parking area, or “Gullfoss Cafe” to get to the upper lot.
A fairly long set of steps separates the two:
We had lunch in the Gullfoss Cafe, which was a pretty good option. They always have Icelandic Lamb Stew, which costs 1950 krona ($15-$16). For that, you get one free refill of a large bowl of soup, along with 2 rolls with butter:
(That’s 3 rolls for our 3 soups; your bowl of lamb stew would come with 2 rolls total, I think? 1 per bowl.) The soup of the day (mushroom, in our case) was 1550 krona ($12-$13), also with a refill. Sandwiches were about $11. You won’t find any amazing deals, or any kid’s meals, but for a major tourist attraction, we didn’t feel ripped off.
Next we headed about 15 minutes south to Geysir. The area is called Geysir, as is one of the hot water spouting spots. But the actual Geysir doesn’t erupt any more; now the main draw is Strokkur, which spouts reliably every 4-10 minutes or so. Here’s a shot of the first half second of an eruption:
Gullfoss is spectacular, but you may not spend much time there, especially if you’ve seen other waterfalls in Iceland. But Strokkur is unique, and each eruption is different. (Is it true that the longer the gap between eruptions, the higher the water spout is?) If the weather is nice, you could easily spend an hour there watching.
Later in the day we headed down toward Flúðir. We stopped at Bragginn, which advertises itself as an “Open clay studio and café.” I drove past it at first, because it looked so small.
[Edit: Sadly, Bragginn is closed in 2018, except for special events.]
But it turns out that most of the building is back behind it, underground! We had nice pieces of cake (chocolate cake and dandelion cake!) and checkout the clay studio:
They sell what they make:
The owner showed us around, and we had a nice visit for the price of a slice of cake (900 krona, or $7.50 or so). A much better experience than our cake from a couple of days ago.
Finally, at long last I got a picture of albino lupine:
Read more about it at the Grapevine.
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