Amazing first day of waterfalls and geysers

Amazing first day of waterfalls and geysers

Vik, Iceland, Europe

We had the most unbelievable first full day in Iceland! I was woken up at about 6:30am due to the bright sunshine coming through our curtains. We are getting about 18 hours of daylight here so it’s tough to escape the sun in the morning. We got up and packed all of our stuff and checked out by 8:30am. We left our bags so we could go find something to eat in the city and ended up at the Laundromat Cafe. We had read about one of these in Copenhagen, but never got the chance to eat there, so we didn’t let this one pass us by again. It was an awesome breakfast! I had blueberry and banana pancakes, and Melissa had eggs, fruit, and granola.

We picked up our rental car and started our drive out of Reykjavik, which is a much smaller “city” than I expected. The population is about 220,000, but it doesn’t feel that big at all. It must be really spread out. It took us just over an hour to get out to the Geyser. We were slowed down tremendously because of the 142 roundabouts leaving the city. So annoying!

We got to the Geyser, was happy to see there was free parking, and took a wander in the glorious sunshine. It was an absolutely beautiful day for our first full day in Iceland. The geysers were cool to see, and we got to see the big one blowing its top a few times, which was really cool. I’ve never seen a geyser in person before, so I was really impressed. Melissa used to work at Yellowstone, so she knew what to expect, and this was no Old Faithful.

We left the Geyser and headed up the road to Gulfoss. Foss is the Icelandic word for waterfall, so this was the first of many fosses we saw today. Gullfoss is amazing, and absolutely massive. Since this country gets all of its energy from thermals, they don’t need to use this for hydroelectric power, but they easily could. The amount of water coming through this fall is enormous!

We took a nice walk on the platforms above the falls, and then walked down below to feel the power of the falls from ground level. It was very impressive. We headed off from there to go south toward Vik where we are staying tonight. There were more stops along the way though, and the first one was Seljalandsfoss.

This was Melissa’s favorite waterfall of the day, and my second favorite. It is a very tall, thin waterfall, and had a couple of walkways to get better views, one to the right, and one to the left. It turns out that the two paths connect and you can actually walk into the cave behind the waterfall to get a view from inside. Luckily we both had our waterproof jackets on, because the fall was spraying a lot, but it was very cool to see.

We were just about to get in the car and start driving again when a girl in the parking lot tipped us off to another waterfall just a few hundred meters down the road. This was called Gljufrabui, and it was definitely my favorite one of the day. This waterfall is not visible from the road, and you can only see a river flowing out from a cavern. It is only when you walk along side (and through) the river, that you can see just how awesome this fall is. Once you get inside the cavern, you are right under the waterfall, and it is amazing! The best thing about it was that we were the only ones in there, so it felt much less contaminated with all the other tourists.

We hit the road again and continued east on Route 1. This is the ring road that goes around the whole country. We stopped at the last waterfall for the day called Skogafoss, and this was my least favorite of the day. It just shows how impressive the other ones were that this big wide waterfall couldn’t impress me.

We were able to fit in one more site in the light of day and got to see a black sand beach. It is called Reynisfjara, and it was very cool to see. I have seen a black sand beach before, but it was on the big island of Hawaii, so the setting was quite different. As expected, the sand was very coarse, so probably not too comfortable on bare feet, but it was too cold to find that out anyway. I was most impressed with the cave made of hexagon-shaped basalt rocks. I’ve seen this kind of thing in pictures before, but never in person, so that was very cool.

We left the beach and found our hotel in Vik just before sunset. We could see the hotel from the road, and I was immediately not impressed. It looked like a few single story buildings made of tin, and I would have thought it was a truck stop if I didn’t know that was our hotel. We went into reception and I was expecting the worst, but it wasn’t too bad. The inside was definitely nicer than the outside. There was a massive group of Chinese tourists in the lobby though, so I was happy to get the keys and get to our room.

The room was in another building, but much the same, I was very impressed with how nice it was inside. The room is absolutely massive, and is exceeding my expectations based on what it looks like from the outside.

We went out for dinner at a restaurant called Sudur Vik, and the food was good. It wasn’t great, but it filled us up. I had a pizza, and Melissa had soup. It certainly wasn’t a meal to write home about, but we’re full, and tired, and ready for bed. Tomorrow we have a lot more driving and a glacier to see!

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