We’ve never gotten ourselves adjusted to the time zone changes we’ve endured on this trip; over the 11 days of the trip we’ve had 5 time zone changes. We keep waking up at 4 AM or so and finding ourselves unable to get back to sleep. Unhelpfully, once we got to the second stop in Norway it stopped getting dark at night. Fortunately our cabin has pretty good blackout shades.
We have an account rep at NCL who does a great job of booking our trips; in this trip’s case she done the cruise herself and shared her notes for this day’s travels. Our goal was to drive the Golden Circle using a rental car rather than a tour bus. Neither of us has ever driven further away from the US border than Vancouver, BC…adventure!
A short cab ride took us to the car rental shop downtown (more about the cabbie in a bit), then we hit the road. This trip is a bit of a “greatest hits” tour, with a waterfall, volcanic activity, and a geology lesson thrown in.
The latter came first. Thingvellir National Park sits on top of a rift canyon, created by the meeting place of the North American and the Eurasian tectonic plates. These plates are separating by 2 cm per year, and cut across the island diagonally. Given enough time the island will split itself in two. Fortunately we will not be here long enough to see this happen. It’s also this thin spot in the earth’s crust that creates all the island’s volcanic activity.
The second stop was at the Geysir geothermal area. You’ll never guess what is there! The geyser first noticed here doesn’t go off anymore, but another geyser goes off about every five minutes. It’s a good show, and like a comment earlier in the trip you get a lot closer to it than Yellowstone would ever allow.
The last big stop is at Gullfoss waterfall, and big is a great way to describe it. A local woman 100 years ago or so saved the waterfall from being turned into a hydroelectric project.
Our last stop was at a promontory recommended by our NCL rep, just west of Vik. It takes a really steep road to access, and the view from the top was scenic. Once again our weather was great, except that at the top the wind was howling something fierce.
We returned the rental car, and Leila gave our cab driver a call. We learned that he is originally from Syria, and came to Iceland to keep his daughters safe from the civil war that has caused so much destruction there. He works driving tour buses, and as a cab driver when he’s not in a bus. He’s a hard working man, caring for his family.
It will be an early morning tomorrow as we leave the ship for the airport…more then.
