Playing Tourists – The Geysir and Gullfoss Edition

Strokkur the geyser calming down after erupting. It goes up every few minutes.

People standing in a large circle around Strokkur. It was pretty crowded there, and we had fun playing ‘Spot the Icelander’, i.e. the people dropping by from nearby summer houses.

Anna had completely forgotten how terrified she was four years ago when we first took her there. Now she really enjoyed it!  That’s Strokkur’s pool in the background.

Going up again!  It doesn’t matter how many times I see it happen, it’s always very cool.

We found Finnur further up on the hill where he was…

… making yet another cool photosphere image. Click on the image in the post below:

Bjarki by one of the small but pretty hot-pools.

Checking the temperature of the water flowing out of the hot-pool.  It wasn’t that hot, probably got cooled down pretty quickly by the brisk and chilly wind.

Guðrún with the pool for the original Geysir behind her.

Me! And Emma turning hew face away from the sun and the wind.

By the original, but mostly dormant, Geysir.

On our way back to the parking lot. Here Snorri’s showing Bjarki how one hot-pool is bubbling with hotness.

Strokkur run-off water.

Bjarki asking me to read the sign.  The parking lot was pretty packed (and this is just a small portion of it!).

The fanciest part of the whole thing was really the very very fancy ‘souvenir’ shop, which has been thoroughly remodeled since the last time we visited. It was downright swanky!

Bjarki demanded to go into that cool looking structure in the back, and was very disappointed when it turned out to contain clothes for sale.

We then headed a little ways down the road to Gullfoss (The Golden Watefall). We parked in the upper parking lot, but next time we’ll park in the lower parking lot for sure.  The upper one requires too much walking!

Walking… walking…  The river is towards the top left, and kind of looks like a walking path!

Pretty scenery from the walkway. There’s a glacier up there behind those mountains.

Walking-path map. We ended up just going to the first vista point and then heading back.

At the first vista point. It was pretty darn windy, and Emma didn’t like it one bit, so we didn’t stay long.

Obligatory overview picture of Gullfoss, along with a good idea of just how close you can get to the waterfall.

Anna was moderately impressed.

Apparently we can thank/blame the flash floods.

Heading back, you can see the lower parking lot off to the left.

The upper parking lot was busy. Very busy.

Lets look some more at nature instead. 🙂

After being total tourists, we drove back but stopped by at the summer house of Guðrún’s dad.

Bjarki on a green machine.

Guðrún’s dad with his harmonica. Bjarki got to try his hand at it, and so did Anna and Baldur.

The kids also drew some pictures.

Soon it was time to head on back to Laugarvatn, after a fun day out.

Laugarvatn isn’t exactly a big town… but there are tons of summer houses nearby.