Golden Circle

For the last day of my Iceland visit I met up with Chiho, my friend from Japan, to drive around the Golden Circle.  We visited the usual must sees: Þingvellir National Park, Haukadalur, and Gulfoss. Þingvellir was pretty cool in that it was where the American continent meets the European continent.  You can see divide.  At Haukadalur, Chiho and I spent many minutes trying to get a decent video/photo of Strokkur, a geysir that erupts every 5 minutes or so.  The heights of the eruptions vary, but they are smaller than Old Faithful.  One time it erupted twice in a row, and the next eruption was paltry.  I didn't really manage to get any good videos.  Perhaps the best one was the first one where I was too close to the geysir and thought I'd get drenched by the water.  You can hear me scream and see that I'm running away.  Gulfoss, a powerful two-tiered waterfall, was my favorite.  Not as wide as Niagra or Victoria Falls, but definitely is more powerful.  Got a bunch of pics but weather wasn't so nice so it probably didn't come out as good as it could be.

Gulfoss lower falls

In addition to seeing the sights we had a nice lunch at the restaurant at Haukadalur.  We had fish soup with free refills (second bowl and bread was enough tho).  Chiho also told me ice cream here should be good cuz dairy here is good.  So I got a soft serve cone at the first place I could (in a gas station) and OMG... it was the best soft serve ice cream ever.  I was really sad I didn't have any day before and that might be the last one ever.