The Golden Circle and Northern Lights Tours: Out of Reykjavik - Iceland, Day 4

This was my last full day in Iceland, and I was finally able to get out of the city.  I signed up for a Golden Circle Tour with my hostel, while two of my hostelmates went on one with an outside company that left two hours before mine but got back two hours earlier.  (Yet somehow they got back after I did.  Not sure how that happened.)  It was a small group of seven people all staying at the hostel.  Early on, the road was closed for some reason and our van was stuck on the highway for about half an hour.  The van driver let us get out if we wanted to take pictures, but there wasn't much around.





Our first stop was Pingvellir National Park, which had amazing views.  Game of Thrones was filmed here too.



Here's the

This is the view from where all the people are walking toward.

More trees

And to the left

Same thing but this side has a house.

I think this is the part where Game of Thrones was filmed but I don't know, since I don't watch the show.

So after walking between the snow-covered rocks, I was going to take a look at the second viewing area, where you can see below on the right.  I saw people slide down the stairs from the viewing area going down, since the snow had turned icy.  Since my boots didn't have any traction, I knew I needed to be extra careful.  So there I go, down the path TO the stairs where people slipped and on my first step to the path, I slide and fall face first into a snow pile.  It was very embarrassing and a lot of people around offered help.  I decided that it wasn't worth my trouble and kept walking on the path.










After this was Geysir, which is.. just a geyser.  I thought this was the geyser but I stood by it for a while and nothing happened.  I later realized the actual geyser was behind it.

A lot of Asian people waiting for a geyser

Then I decided to get ice cream.  People in my group were surprised.  Hello, it's ice cream.

After this was Gullfoss, a waterfall.  It was pretty but kinda tough to take pictures.  It was really cold, I didn't bring my gloves, and the combination of the wind and the water from the waterfall was blowing sharp, small pieces of ice all over.

Rainbow!

Last stop was Kerio, which was really just.. a crater.  I could've walked around, but I figured that the crater looked the same from all sides.  Also, I'm scared of heights so I was worried I'd fall to my death with my no traction boots.

Our guide sang an Icelandic song.  It was cool!

Our bus

Before going back, we took a rest stop and I thought it was interesting that their "Cooler Ranch" flavor is called "Cool American".

The tour guide gave us Icelandic beer and a few of the people cooled theirs up by sticking it in the snow.

I was able to get back and take a nap to rest up for the Northern Lights tour later that evening.  The last night was the first good night to see the lights while I was in Iceland, since it was clear.  I wore a lot of layers but was still not sufficiently prepared for how cold it was going to be.

Pre-Lights shot with my hostelmates on the bus.

While we were waiting for the bus to pick us up, we could see part of the lights in the city, so we knew we'd have a good chance.  We drove about 45 minutes out of the city before we stopped.  It was really dark and I was trying to last as long as I could outside before I had to go in the bus to get warm.  Obviously, I didn't bring any professional gear, so I don't have pictures to capture what I saw.  But we were looking at the camera and tripod of someone else and the pictures he captured were amazing - no filters needed.  I was trying to see if my hostelmate to get the pictures so I could put them on here, but the guy never sent them.  At least I have my memories of the lights.  This is the best picture I got with my Northern Lights camera app.