On our Way to Golden Circle

Yeah, so I am still behind on my posts but hopefully I will catch up at some point. I blame my husband who just bought a new camera for this trip and is taking 1000's of photos for me to sort through.

This is our third and last day in Iceland and it was not nearly enough time to do everything we wanted. I guess there is always next time! Today we all woke up at a reasonably normal time and barely made it out the door in time to find a place to eat breakfast/lunch. We didn't have time for our light breakfast in the early AM because today we all slept in!

Again we walked down the main shopping street (Laugavegur) and we ended up finding a little French bistro that served brunch. Sounded like a perfect solution to our late morning start! Both Fredrik and I had an "English Breakfast" with scrambled eggs, sausage (more like a mini hot dog), bacon, baked beans (how is that "English"?), Icelandic black pudding (yuck), tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes, fresh fruit, and orange juice. It also came with a huge basket of pastries like croissants, pain au chocolate, bread, jam and butter. We ordered another basket of pastries for the kids and shared some of our meals with them. I am not sure we needed the extra basket of pastries though but the kids devoured the basket of goodies. My husband and I were quite pleased with the breakfast even if some of the items were questionable. There was plenty of food to fill us up!

Our "English" breakfast brunch which was quite delicious. It was a place called Le Bistro and I would definitely recommend it. 

Then we were off on the bus to our "Golden Circle Tour" however, I opted for the shorter version which was called "Gullfoss, Geysir & Þingvellir" because it is the shorter version of the same tour. It was 6 hours instead of 8 hours and so there was a little less time at each location and minus a visit to the greenhouse which I wasn't sure the kids would enjoy anyway. The first part of the trip was a fairly long bus ride of almost an hour. We had one stop to pick up some people about half way there but otherwise that was the worst of the trip. Our guide was entertaining and told us lots of things along the way that I promptly forgot. ;)

Here we are ready to go on our bus tour!

We saw some interesting things on the bus ride and while my husband took many photos, I just can't remember what it was he was taking photos of. This one below caught my eye and my memory because it was clear to see where the lava bubbled up and then cooled so you can still see the bubbles. This was along the fault lines where the two tectonic plates are pushing away from each other. In reality, the line is rather wide and scattered across the middle of Iceland. Also, when the plates push away from each other the land falls into the hole so it creates valleys. Sometimes these valleys get filled up with lava so the land looks rather odd. I think this is one of those places where the land has fallen away only to get filled up again with lava later.

Interesting rock formations. 

Icelandic horses resting - not dead! Linnea really wanted to ride horses in Iceland but many tours that I found were too long or were for older riders. Maybe next time!