Iceland – Day 8

Saturday July 18

Borganes

Saturday was a travel day. Final goodbye to Guesthouse Hof and the volcano.

 

 

First we went to Borganes to check out the sweater shop we had seen on the way to Snæfellsnes. The shop was open. It was a small place but they had a lot of cool stuff. We were there for some time. Philip bought a sweater and I got a hat. Aase got a lot of yarn to make shawls. Betina and I found out later that it would be our Christmas presents. The shop owner didn’t speak much Danish or English but we were still able to  communicate about knitting, sweaters, and other wool related subjects. What was really cool was that the shop owner had knitted both Philip’s sweater and my hat.

We needed lunch to go and Philip had found Edduveröld online, a great restaurant and museum located on the old pier.  

 

 

One wall inside the restaurant was covered with stories from Norse mythology. 

 

 

I don’t think they were that used to preparing take out food, they wrapped it carefully and we got it in a big cardboard box. Yep that’s me with all our food and my new hat.

 

 

At that point, we were ready to take on Thingvellir! On the way we crossed under water.

 

 

Thingvellir

At first we drove to far and got to the Information Center instead of the Visitor Center. In the parking lot we saw this spectacular vehicle.

 

 

We turned around and drove back to the Visitor Center. It was a pretty busy place but we found a parking spot a little outside the main parking area. Before we did anything, we had lunch. We walked through some low bushes toward the rift. We crossed over smaller rifts in the ground before we got to the big rift. The rift? Read more about it here. In short, Iceland is the only land where the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates meet (all other action is in the ocean.) The plates are in constant movement and the rift widens by 2.5 cm or 1 inch per year. Below is a picture of a smaller rift.

 

 

When we could not get any further we sat down and had a great lunch while looking over the rift and the nearby lake.

 

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We packed up the lunch trash, went to the cars to get our gear. First we went to the visitor center, or rather in front of the visitor center. Quite a lot of people there. 

 

 

It was just next to the rift and we got more pictures.

 

 

We walked on paths to Lögberg – the Law rock. It was a cool place but with a lot of tourists.

 

 

As we walked around there, we looked over the big fields and imagined the people of Iceland coming together to rule the country on this site 1000 years ago or so.

 

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Parking lot area from below:

 

 

Suddenly Aase and Thorkild were nowhere to be found. Gone. What we knew was that they were not at Lögberg anymore. Anders, Philip, and I continued down the path.

 

 

We found them a little further down.

 

 

Pictures were taken, pH was measured, and we walked around for a little. Then we moved on and walked to Öxarárfoss, a nice waterfall. On the way there, we walked next to a wall of rock.

 

 

There was a nice board walk out to the waterfall.

 

 

Since it was a couple of miles from the parking lot, there were not as many tourists as at Lögberg. We spent some time at Öxarárfoss with some other tourists, taking pictures. I *need* a lens like that!

 

 

The waterfall was nice.

 

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I think I was trying to record something.

 

 

And then this 🙂 – can’t help it – family!

One moment my brother looks so relaxed and sweet, the next something happened!!

 

 

More family, one moment Aase is trying to steal a hat, the next she looks so innocent.

 

 

Hanging out for a little before the next adventure. Not sure what is going on here. But it’s graphic.

 

 

And then the photographer shot the photographer:

 

 

It was really nice to sit by the waterfall.

 

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We walked back towards Lögberg and Anders took these shots:

 

 

We stopped briefly at Lögberg again.

 

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Then we walked into the rift. It was easy access and close to Lögberg. As we have seen many times now, as soon as you get away from the main path, you lose 98 % of the other tourist. This was no difference. I think we saw two other people on the trail. The trail was more like a single track and it was amazing to walk between the cliffs on the path full of green and purple plants.

 

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We walked for quite a while and we didn’t know if we could get out at the end. But we didn’t feel like walking the same way back so we continued.

 

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All of a sudden, this little guy is running in front of us.

 

 

Mama bird red leg is sitting high up on some rocks not looking too happy.

 

 

After maybe an hour of hiking we found a spot where the wall of the rift was quite low and we could cross over it and we ended on a gravel path.

 

 

What did we see right there in front of us? An owl.

 

 

The cutest thing, he was barely awake but he certainly knew we were there. He moved his head once in a while but otherwise didn’t move.

 

 

After numerous pictures of the owl we moved on. At first we walked to the right but it was the opposite directions of where we had come from. We turned around and walked the other way. We ended up at a paved road along more wet area. We could see Lögberg at a distance.

 

 

This picture shows the area around Lögberg well. Try to imagine the annual meetings here, many, many years ago.

 

 

We walked up some steepish hills and some stairs and we ended up at the beginning of the rift. It was only a short walk back to the cars.

At that point we were quite tired and we just drove straight to Reykjavik.

Reykjavik

We got to Reykjavik and it was easy to find downtown but finding and navigating downtown was a different story. We called the hotel and they didn’t have any hotel parking however, all parking in Reykjavik was free on weekends so we parked somewhere and walked through part of town with our suitcases.

We stayed at Hotel Skjaldbreid in the center of Reykjavik. A very cool place in an old building. This was our last night in Iceland and Aase and Thorkild wanted to take us out for dinner. We walked through town first without finding anything that was too exciting. Then we decided to give an Italian restaurant a chance. It was ok food and the place was nice.

 

 

After dinner we walked around town.

 

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It was a beautiful evening and as usual, not dark but with nice clouds.

 

 

We also found important information about Santa Claus.

 

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The main streets in Reykjavik are closed to traffic which makes it a lot easier to just walk around town (and a lot harder to figure out where you can and cannot drive.)

 

 

We walked almost to the other end of town and ended up in a pub where we got beer.

 

 

That was the last night. We walked back to the hotel, got to bed, and slept well.

Jump to Day 7

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