Monday, May 22, 2017

Day 11: Viking Horse Riding and Golden Circle

We rode Icelandic Viking Horses! The breed is virtually unchanged since the 9th century AD.



Jeff with his horse Jonas (pronounced Yo-nnas)


Me and my horse Shonna (pronounced with a long "o" sound)

We decided not to take pictures while we were riding due to the likelihood of dropping our phones from 6 feet up.

We stopped by a beautiful canyon.




For the record, I am TERRIBLE at horse riding. But I managed not to fall off. Mostly by grabbing onto the saddle with one hand.

Next we went on a bus tour of the Golden Circle, which is 3 famous stops near Reykjavik that everyone always visits.

The first stop was the "no man's land" between the European plate and North American plate. The plates are pulling apart by 2cm every year, so Iceland is slowly getting larger. 



Jeff took this picture from a moving bus. Pretty good, huh?

Viking horses everywhere

Next stop, the Gulfoss waterfall. The sun came out a bit so we could see a beautiful rainbow.






We went down right by the water, and got very wet. Luckily all our clothes (minus our gloves) were waterproof.

Video we sent to Axel


Next we went to the Geysir. There were signs EVERYWHERE not to touch the water because it is 80-100 degrees celsius. But we saw no less than TWO people stick their hands in it! They both exclaimed, "Wow, that IS hot!" No duh. Luckily they didn't have to go to the hospital (only because they were smart enough to touch the run-off instead)

Jeff pretending to have a hard time walking over the geyser run-off.

Geysir erupts every 5 minutes, so we were able to see the cycle 5 times. Sometimes it did double eruptions. There is no warning for the eruptions (unlike Old Faithful in Yellowstone that bubbles a lot before) so people always screamed. Silly people.

"Should I put my hand in?"




We decided we couldn't leave Iceland without having seafood, so we found a reasonably priced seafood restaurant in Reykjavik when we got back. It was so delicious!

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