February 23, 2025 - Reykjavik -- Golden Circle Tour, Iceland

Today's tour took us to the Golden Circle which has some of Iceland's most popular tourist attractions. We were in a small group - six other women and the three of us, along with our driver/guide. We left the hotel about 8:45 and headed off to our first stop, the Frioheimar Greenhouse. It was pretty cloudy and we passed by some of the hills covered in snow.

We saw a geothermal plant. Over 70% of all of Iceland's enery is produced from hydroelectric sources and 30% is geothermal. Over 90% of all the homes in Iceland are heated from geothermal energy.
We beat the big tour busses to the greenhouse. We visited there in 2019, but didn't get the background information at that time - we just had lunch. The greenhouse started in 1995 and they have about 27,000 tomato plants. Everything is organic and they do not use any pesticides. They harvest 2000 pounds of tomatoes a day!

It is all hydroponic and they serve tomato soup, as well as a tomato beer. No, we didn't try any!

They had some Icelandic horses we went out to see, too.
We continued on to the Geysir geothermal area. The wind was crazy but we did hike up to the top of the yellow trail on the map!

The pool looked a little like Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone, but it was definitey not as vibrant because of the cloud cover.
Stokkur Hot Springs is not nearly as impressive as Old Faithful, but it does erupt about every five minutes.
Litle Geysir

Our next stop was Gullfoss, which means gold waterfall. It was WINDY - and the SLEET was pelting us in the face! Needless to say, we look pretty funny in our jackets with jackets over them!


Here is a video of the falls. If you have the sound on, you can hear the wind!
Gullfoss Video: https://youtu.be/ydB8jONYUac?si=mTnDo5orZmxtAPLm

We didn't spend too long outside before heading back to the bus! After the falls, our guide stopped for us to see and feed some of the Icelandic horses.

Our last stop of the tour was at Pingvellir National Park. We did not visit here when we were in Iceland in 2019, so this was new to us.

Established in 1928, Pingvellir is Iceland's first national park and is now listed as a UNESCO world heritage site. "Pingvellir" means "Assembly Plains," and is the place of Iceland's first parliament which was founded in 930, making it the oldest operating parliament globally. The parliament continued to convene at the fields of the River Oxara for 868 years (until 1798). Icelanders consider it the nation's birthplace.
Pingvellir has a unique geographical setting of a rift valley in the divide between the North-American and Eurasian continental plates. The lava fields are torn apart by tectonic forces, leaving gorges and fissures.
We followed the hiking path through the enourmous cleft to the "law rock" and Oxara River, which are enveloped by walls of basalt rocks.

There were signs explaining the punishments handed out by the parliament in this area between 930 and 1262. Several punishments included drowning in the lake!

Yes, the sun was out for a while and we had beautiful blue skies!

Back to the bus and we were on our way back to Reykjavik.
And then the clouds rolled back in ...

We walked to Reykjavik Kitchen for dinner tonight, then a stroll by the waterfront. No sign of the Northern Lights, so we headed back to the hotel and said goodnight to Wendy. About 9:30, Tobey and I decided to walk back down to the harbor in hopes of sighting those elusive lights, but no luck.

Tomorrow is our last day in Reykjavik, so it has been a very short visit!