Iceland: July 2015
From there it was a short way to the homestead of Erik the Red, where we saw the second-place statue of Leif Erikson, hiked up a hillside to the ruins of the foundation of the original sod house on this site, hiked a bit further to a little waterfall, and dressed up as Vikings.
The costumed guide explained the features of the reconstruction sod house, built here a few years ago using all authentic period tools. She talked about the scarcity of wood, the terrible off-gassing of the peat the Vikings burned, and the pagan belief that you only lie down when you're dead as all contributing to the small beds where people slept sitting up. "Even the kids?" asked Robert. "I mean, they just flop over when they fall asleep. . . ."
At the end of the tour, Marcus spotted a ladder against the side of the house and asked the guide if he could climb up it. She agreed (very unAmericanly), and he did so.
In the nearby town of Budardalur, we ate a lamb soup and lamb meatballs for lunch at a cafe attached to the visitors' center, and then we checked into our hostel for the night, the Dalakot Guesthouse. "Did you know there would be three separate beds?" hissed Robert. Hello, small town!
We drove twenty minutes north to a local town pool, a lovely heated pool with fewer rules than the Blue Lagoon and more water wings for Samantha. It was very empty, and we stayed swimming and chatting with a local man and a Belgian family until the pool closed at 8:00 in the evening. From there we drove back to our guesthouse, where we had dinner next to the family of the waitress from the lunch cafe. "You know there are only a hundred thousand people outside of Reykjavik in this entire country, right?" asked Robert. "Of course we're going to see some of them twice!" Strangely, we were all pretty tired tonight, and all slept well.
In the morning we got up and out before breakfast was served in order to get a jump on the driving for the day, and despite overly optimistic GoogleMaps distances and some crazy gravel roads, we made it to Gullfoss, Golden Falls, around 11:00.
We hiked out over both the lower and upper paths and then came back into the cafeteria near the upper path for their all-you-can-eat lamb soup and bread and butter for lunch. Everyone was a fan.
Just down the road from Gullfoss was Geysir, where we happily timed the geyser and watched it erupt five or six times (including one tiny baby eruption, one giant one, one twin one, and a few normal ones) in the course of half an hour.
Our next stop was the geothermal bakery tour at Laugarvatn Fontana, near the hot springs the Vikings baptized themselves at when they converted to Christianity in the year 1000. Our guide dug up a rye bread she'd buried the day before, and buried a new pot of batter for tomorrow, and we went inside to sample it with butter.
The bread was delicious, but the guide seemed mystified when I asked if they ever tried any other flavors, or always just basic rye. "We bake rye," she explained. Check. She also specified that there was no "thing called molasses" in their bread, although she said that "people always ask her about it," so she'd had to learn that molasses is "something you get from a syrup from a tree." Double check.
After we'd eaten our fill of bread, we went into the spa portion of the place, and this was perhaps my favorite pool of all that we'd been to in Iceland. All of these geothermally heated pools are lovely--the "hot" tubs are 37 or 38 degrees C, while the other pools vary between 32-34 degrees. Here there was a low soaking pool with smooth marble headrests as well as the standard Marcus-depth swimming pool, and then a few hot tubs, and also a sauna built over one of the hot springs itself. You could also go into the lake, which is fed by the hot springs, and varied from quite chilly to warm to boiling depending on where you stepped.
After a long, relaxing afternoon, with Samantha paddling about everywhere, loving the provided toys, and Marcus swimming and diving underwater like a fish (we introduced him to Marco-Polo), we finally got dressed and headed down the road a bit further to Kerid Crater.
Samantha slept through nearly all of the crater, as we hiked around its rim, and then I found a comfy spot to sit in the sun with her and doze as well, while Robert and Marcus hiked down to the lake at the bottom. Marcus spent the better part of an hour trying to catch fish in the lake, and I think he could have stayed there even longer.
Leaving here, Samantha remained asleep as we buckled her into her carseat, and Marcus fell asleep before we were five minutes from the crater. Both slept through our drive into Selfoss for dinner at a trendy burgers and shake place (the ketchup here was clearly imported), our drive to tonight's hostel, and even the transfer into bed, sleeping about 15 hours in a row that night.
The hostel (Ljosafossskoli) was very friendly, with dogs and a living room and gym and a lovely breakfast the next morning, with homemade blueberry jam and applesauce along with the breads, eggs, and oatmeal. We were very close to Thingvellir at this point, so it was an easy drive into the National Park after breakfast.
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Created: 8/3/15. Last Modified: 8/3/15.