After picking dad up at the airport around 7am, we had about 2 hours to burn before we could go to the Blue Lagoon.  I decided to drive the peninsula the long way and check out the coastline, and then we arrived in Grindavik and got coffee while we waited.  The owner of the coffee shop, Bryggjan, was as nice as he was adverse to putting vowels in the name of his business.  He gave us some local tips to see some cool things.

And then we went to the Blue Lagoon. I had splurged for the premium package so I got a towel and cool stuff to put on my face and a free drink.  So we hung out in the geothermal hot spring, drank a beer, and relaxed.  Pretty good for after a long flight.  Touristy of course, but a fun experience nonetheless.

On our way back through, we checked out one of the “off the beaten path” places the man at Bryggjan had suggested.  It was a line of volcanoes that were misting and had cool moss-covered lava rocks.

After a scenic drive back to Reykjavik, I gave my dad a tour of the basics and then we grabbed lunch at a small cafe.  Had some good vegetarian chili.  Then we took on the Golden Circle.

Þingvellir National Park was the first stop, and there’s a lot to see there. Þingvellir is actually where the tectonic plates are breaking apart, and you can tell by the rocks and stuff.

And this is the crater lake that dad was obsessed with because he saw it on an ancient alien Sci Fi show. In his defense, it was clearly created by aliens.

We hiked around the button, but this is what it looks like from the top.

And we went to Geysir and Strokkur, highlights of he Golden Circle in Iceland.  It goes off every 4 minutes or so, and we saw it go a few times.

I actually uploaded the pictures in backwards order, but whatever. This is Gulfoss. It’s a waterfall that looks cool, but a lot of the pictures you’ll see is when it’s frozen. This is when it’s not frozen.

So that was exciting.  The next day we came back and went to Seljalandsfoss. Pretty sure it’s Seljalandsfoss at least. We had our Maid of the Mist ponchos so we were pretty legit and were able to walk behind the waterfalls and everything.

A short hike down the path, which most people don’t go to, is the Gljúfrabúi  waterfall. It’s probably cooler in my opinion. Here it is.

So this one is Skogafoss.  We also got unnecessarily close to this one.

There’s a plane crash on the beach in the South of Iceland. They decided to just leave it there, and it was off the beaten path a bit but we found it on the black sandy beach.

Then we went to the coast and found this. I forgot what it was called.

Then we went to the actual black beach, which was extremely windy. My pictures didn’t turn out so well because it was so wet, but you can see some cool basalt columns and an angry ocean.

The next day we saw guess what? More waterfalls! I think this was Svartifoss.

Jokull Glacial Lagoon is like the glacier gateway to the ocean. You can go on boats and stuff like this, but it was cold so that seemed a little bit unnecessary. But it was fun to walk around.

Then we had to drive to the guesthouse. But I had it wrong. So we drove 30 minutes past what I thought was the guesthouse, drove 30 minutes back to what I thought was the guesthouse, but it wasn’t (but it did have a cute Icelandic receptionist), and then 30 minutes back to where we were originally to find he actual guesthouse.

We met a nice couple traveling with their mother (they were from the Netherlands) in the guesthouse and talked to them for quite a while.  That was nice.