There is a place on earth so unbelievable and breathtaking beautiful. Geysirs. Ice cold waterfalls, ice mountains, volcanos and hot springs. Magical by day and night. Iceland. I’m posting about the Golden Circle Tour today.

Just like with the Northern Lights Tour, we were picked up at our hotel and brought to the gathering place. We were travelling by bus. If you book a tour at Reykjavik Excursions you should be on time!

Golden Circle Fontana Tour

• 1. Stop – Bakery & Tourisms Office 

We stopped at a bakery to get food for our trip. You can also go to the toilet and get some information at the Tourism Office.

• 2. Stop- Geysir

The first stop was at the Geysir parc. The water was bubbling up everywhere (!!!). Every couple of meters there was a hole with crystal clear hot water. The biggest Geysir shoots hot water up to 30-50 meters in the air every 7 minutes.  It’s so great to stand there and wait for it to happen. Thank God there was not that much wind that day so we didn’t have to stay so far away.

• 3. Stop – Fontana Wellness

After half the day was over, we had to relax. We stopped at the Fontana Wellness in Laugarvatn. A little cute Spa with a whirlpool, a natural stone pool and 2 „normal pools“. The water was 40°C hot. It is filtered – except for the stone pool – in there you can see seaweed as well. The water in there is much hotter as well.

The lake around the Spa is warm as well. You can also jump in there. You have to take your own towels or pay extra. Eat some hot soup in the restaurant or drink smoothies! You can also rent bath robes or bathing suits. Aw – and when we arrived we dug out a pot that was put there the last night. Guess what, there was bread in there! The bread was baked in the hot soil.

• 4. Stop -Gullfoss Waterfall

After relaxing we made our way to the Gullfoss Waterfalls. We had to drive there for about 1:20 hours.  The Gullfoss Waterfall is the most famous waterfall in Iceland. It’s also called the golden waterfall. The water falls down into the Glacierriver Hvítá – a 2,5 km long and 70 METER deep canyon!! On warm days that’s 1200 m³ water falling per second! The upper part of the waterfall is 11m high. The lower part is 20m high. The pictures can’t tell how huge it feels in reality.

At the edge of the waterfalls are layers of lava. Under the basalt layer is a lot of gravel. The falling water rinses the gravel away and the basalt layers break. This has been building the canyon for over 10.000 years. The erosive regression is about 30cm a year. If you’d double the water’s speed, it could transport 60times more. Iceland Travelguide

• 5. Stop–Þingvellir National Park

The last station was the Thingvellir National Park – the national parc where the American and the Eurasian Continental Plates are moving away from each other. Every year a little bit more. You could say that the island is growing. The park is relevant to our history. In the year 900 people on Iceland began to think about a general assembly for the settlers. The Icelandic Parliament was founded and the first parliamental work was built. The Althing in Thingvellir was Iceland’s supreme Legislative and Judicative from 930 until 1262.

Inauguration and dissolutions of the assembly took place here. Law was announced, the calendar was confirmed and trials were held here. Everyone taking part was allowed to talk. Today there are no longer assemblies, but Thingvellir is a wonderful place to take a walk in nature. It’s also close to the Silfra Lake where you can snorkel. I couldn’t do that though, but here you can see how the continental plate move.

-> You can find my post about the Northern Lights Tour in Iceland here <-
->Click here for all the Iceland posts <-