The golden circle

Typical. Last night we skipped Reykjavik's notorious pub crawl, the Runter, and headed out in search of the northern lights. All the signs were there - clear skies, no wind, and the northern light tour buses had headed out for the first time in three or four days. But, alas, we drove and we drove and we drove. And we waited and we waited and we waited. And we saw nothing. Just the black night sky. No spectacular green light show. Nothing.

At breakfast this morning, we listened in on other people's conversations intently just in case their luck was better than ours. Didn't sound like it. It did sound like they had a bloody good time on the Runter though. Bugger.

Definitely worth leaving the comfort of your car to get a snap like this!

Oh well. Onwards and upwards. Not wanting to dwell on our bad luck, we hit the road again. This time, we were searching for the Golden Circle. And no, I am not talking about some kind of kinky Icelandic invention to help pass the time on those cold dark winter days. The Golden Circle refers to the three unique sites just outside of Reykjavik: Gulfoss, Geysir and Pingvellir.

We did this little tour in reverse, just because we could, so first stop was Pingvellir national park, the site of the world's first democratic Parliament - the Alping.

The Alping

You gotta give it to the Vikings. They picked a pretty spectacular spot to sit and gesticulate over the big issues. The area sits on the edge of an immense rift caused by the separating North American and Eurasian tetonic plates and was made a Unesco world heritage site in 2004. Set up in 930 AD, you can still see the remains of the booths, where the Vikings camped. Nearby is Iceland's largest lake, Pingvalavatn. Unfortunately, it was too bloody cold for us to do much exploring but I did manage to take the money shot of the weekend.

The money shot - Pingvallavatn, Iceland's largest lake

Stop number two: the three spouting hot springs at Geysir. The biggest spring, the Great Geysir, was clogged years ago by stupid tourists chucking things into it to get it to explode. But you can still get excited (?) about Strokkur, which bubbles away like crazy and explodes every ten minutes or so ... it sounds naff, but it's kinda cool ...

Carl times his shot perfectly

Emma tries to be funny

Stop three: Gulfoss, a massive double waterfall. By the time we reached Gulfoss, the temperature had plummeted to about -10. Add a serious windchill and it's fair to say that there wasn't that much enjoyment to be had here. Unless, of course, you count the monster truck, which I think was the highlight of Carl's day!

Gulfoss (golden falls)

Slightly bigger - and perhaps appropriate for driving around icy roads - than our little Fiat punto!