Rounding the Golden Circle

Yesterday I started the area known as the Golden Circle. It isn't a Circle and only contains three things - the part of the Rift Valley where the original parliament sat, the Gullfoss Waterfall and Geyser.

Having stayed the night at the Rift Valley, I looked around properly this morning. They fly the Icelandic flag where they think the original speaker stood. There is a river that flows through part of the rift, with a waterfall fromAmerica into the rift, another within the rift and a third from the rift to Europe. Unfortunately the third is under a bridge, so I only photographed the first two. The one in the middle has a big pond at the bottom of it where they drowned women. There is also a picture of a part of the rift where they hung men.

Then I went to geyser. The original doesn't explode any more - it stopped after a volcanic event, so all you have of it is a steamy pool. There is on that is supposed to explode every 10 to 15 minutes, but it was doing its stuff every 3 minutes and 18 seconds.

Gullfoss is supposed to be the most spectacular Waterfall in Iceland, as it falls one way, then at 90 degrees. There are several shots of it because you cannot get the whole splendour in one. There is also a glacier close by.

Lastly I went to Strong, where they recreated a longhouse. In this valley a number of farms were destroyed by a volcanic eruption a number of centuries ago. Recently they have excavated the ruins, so they have a really good idea of how they looked. One of these was used as a model for Strong. Unfortunately it was closed.