{"id":152,"date":"2009-07-26T18:38:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/finnur.net\/blog\/?p=152"},"modified":"2009-07-26T18:38:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T18:38:00","slug":"the-golden-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/the-golden-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Golden Circle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you happen to stop in Iceland for a few days, chances are that you&#8217;ll take &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Golden_Circle_(Iceland)\">Golden Circle Tour<\/a>&#8220;.  This takes you to the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gullfoss\">Golden Waterfall (Gullfoss)<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Haukadalur\">Geysir-area (Haukadalur)<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/%C3%9Eingvellir\">Thingvellir (\u00deingvellir)<\/a> in one day.  As it happened, our summer house was close to the first two, and we passed by number three on the way back to the city.  Since Bjarki fell asleep in the car just before we got to Thingvellir, we figured it would be a good idea to let him sleep while Hrefna and Anna did a little bit of exploring.<\/p>\n<p>Thingvellir is located on the rift between the European and American tectonic plates.  The plates move away from each other forming a seizable rift valley between them, which is low enough to be mostly filled with water, i.e. Lake Thingvellir (\u00deingvallarvatn).  The area is happily not only geologically very very interesting, but also quite pretty.  Fortunately it stayed dry while we were there, but we could see scattered rainclouds in the distance.  The weather has thus changed from &#8220;gorgeous&#8221; to &#8220;mild&#8221;. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>After the walk, we drove back to the city, and met \u00d3li and little \u00c1g\u00fasta Mar\u00eda at a swimming pool to wash off the dust.  Afterwards we had a lovely dinner at \u00d3li and Holla&#8217;s house, and chatted long into the evening, or until the Bjarki was essentially catatonic due to tiredness.  Then we headed home, put the children to bed, and worked on laundry and culling some of the 900 photos.  Good times! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>Now, the obligatory four pictures (Picasa&#8217;s blog post limit):<\/p>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3321-742195.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3321-742190.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Strokkur\">Strokkur<\/a> erupts at the Geysir-area.  It erupts every 4-8 minutes.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3361-742225.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3361-742218.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>The foursome at Gullfoss (The Golden Waterfall).<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3519-742262.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3519-742253.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>Anna at Thingvellir.  Off in the distance on the left you can see<br \/>a dark line.  That&#8217;s a long crack in the surface, with one part<br \/>falling downwards, into the rift valley.  Anna is crouching by<br \/>a water-filled crevice in the rift valley.<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div style=\"MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\"><a href=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3616-742293.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"\/blogg\/uploaded_images\/IMG_3616-742285.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><br \/>Our Sunday-night dinner hosts: Holla, \u00d3li and \u00c1g\u00fasta Mar\u00eda.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you happen to stop in Iceland for a few days, chances are that you&#8217;ll take &#8220;Golden Circle Tour&#8220;. This takes you to the Golden Waterfall (Gullfoss), Geysir-area (Haukadalur) and Thingvellir (\u00deingvellir) in one day. As it happened, our summer house was close to the first two, and we passed by number three on the<a class=\"button\" href=\"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/the-golden-circle\/\" title=\"Read More\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-container col-md-12"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrefna.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}