Iceland's Golden Circle - Self Guided Tour

Oh Iceland, what have you done to me?! Who in their right mind leaves sunny 85º Ohio and heads to “summer” in Iceland with highs of 55º on a good day? I’m still not sure, but it only took 1 text from my Taiwan travel buddy Tina and a few hours in Iceland to convince me that I had most definitely made the right decision; this country is beyond captivating!!

Tina flew from Jersey and I from Ohio and we met bright and early around 8:30am at the Reykjavik airport in Iceland without a clue in the world what would come next! We grabbed our WiFi hotspot for the week from TraWire, headed to Sixt for our rental car, ran quickly into Bonus ( a local grocery chain) and we were on our way! Iceland Golden Circle, here we come!

The Golden Circle Iceland is a circular stretch of road around 3 hours long that is a popular tourist destination due to all the “Icelandic” things that lie along this loop including waterfalls, a geyser, continental faults, and much more. It is a common day trip for tourists who have only several hours as a layover in Iceland or whom don’t quite want to drive around the entire island (we defiantly had more than a couple of hours AND did drive the entire island...but still went for the Golden Circle as well!)

We were hardly 30 minutes outside of the city before we made our first impromptu, side of the road stop (1st of about 5,000 of these stops!) to see some Icelandic horses...little did we realize at the time that we wouldn’t be able to drive more than 20 minutes for the remainder of the trip without seeing more horses!

Horses aside, we made our way to Pingvellier National Park where we were greeted by large lava formations and an impressive continental divide that has created a small canyon through the middle of the rocks. We also checked out our first waterfall {Oxarafoss} of the trip (little did we know that this was only the first of 86 such falls that we would encounter over the next 10 days!). 

Our next stop around the circle was hiking to Brurfoss Waterfalls, I’m not sure if this is a common stop along the Golden Circle Route or not seeing as most other things were convenient “side of the road” type of stops and this was more of a “2.5 hour hike to the falls” type of stop. But, h.o.l.y m.o.l.y was it worth it {{I may have ended up with my boot in the mud up past my ankle, a sopping wet sock, and a Nikon camera lens face first in the mud…but lordy was it a fun time!}} On our hike back to the car we stopped by yet another field of horses for more pictures and imagine our surprise when 2 walked right up to us and let us pet them!!!

Our next pit stop included a late dinner in Haukadalur at the famous Stokkur Geyser along with of course watching the geyser shoot off several times, what a fun experience to watch! After a bit more driving our last stop was a 2-for-1 deal with checking out the Keio Crater along with experiencing our first night of Midnight Sun. The crater is a ginormous hole made from a magma chamber that collapsed and then filled with the bluest water I have ever seen! Midnight sun on the other had takes place in Iceland during the peak of summer when the sun doesn't set until 11pm and rises around 3am and leaves 4ish hours of dusk outside, never truly getting dark {{I didn't see it dark outside once during my 10 days in Iceland!}}. On this day we stopped at Keio Crater at 10:45pm and had no issues getting around or seeing anything!

A bit more driving for the night and we made it to our first VERY well deserved bed for the evening in Selfoss booked through AirBnB {click this link to save on your first stay with AirBnB}.

Day one in Iceland is officially in the books! Tired, sore, and ready for bed, but only with the happiest of minds!