Day 2 - Golden Circle
The Golden Circle is a popular sightseeing route that connects Gullfoss, the Haukadalur (Geysir) geothermal area, and Þingvellir National Park.
How to get there
The total driving time is about 3.5 hours, so it’s necessary to plan for how much time you want to take to explore at each destination. We dedicated a day to this route, but others who want to spend more time in Þingvellir or at other stops should allot more time. We were so short on daylight, we would have been lucky to even get to these 3 (we didn’t, but that’s a debacle that I’ll expand on below.) Since this is a loop drive, we were able to stay in Ölfus for a second night.
In a way there was a plus about Iceland’s super short winter days: it was easy to maximize our days without exhausting ourselves. Since it didn’t start getting bright until around 10 AM, we could get up around 8 AM and be on the road around 9 AM without wasting any sunlight. We would call it a day at 4 PM, getting groceries and cooking dinner with hours to spare before bedtime. These photos below were taken around 9:40 AM, when the sky was just beginning to show signs of day.
Our first stop on the Golden Circle was Gullfoss. This waterfall is incomprehensibly huge and geologically unique. The massive width of the river forms a wall of water that drops into a chasm. The pictures really don’t do it justice, and on the day we were there, neither did the weather. The sky was about as gloomy and dark as it could be without it straight-up snowing.
Gullfoss has a good amount of walking trails here that lead to various vantage points, and they’re worth the walk since the views are very different. In the summer when there isn’t snow, there is a trail that leads much farther out to the edge of the waterfall. Try to look for the people in these photos to get a sense of just how huge this waterfall is.
The next stop on our Golden Circle tour was the Haukadalur geothermal area. There are touristy amenities here such as cafes and shops, so we had lunch before walking around. This area is home to the now dormant Geysir (which originated the word geyser!) and the very active Strokkur—basically Iceland’s version of Yellowstone’s Old Faithful. It was a unique scene, with the snow accumulating right up to the edge of steaming hot springs. The smell of sulfur tinged the air.
There’s a number of things to see in Þingvellir National Park, but the main attraction we wanted to see was Öxarárfoss. We were already short on daylight when we left from Haukadalur, and it had been quite dark the whole day because of the thick clouds. As we drove along the highway to Öxarárfoss, everywhere we looked was a somewhat terrifying, endless whiteness.
Somewhere along Route 365 we pulled over on a side road to take some pictures…to our horrific discovery minutes later that our car was stuck. The tires had no traction whatsoever in the snow and they spun futilely when we tried to reverse back on to the road. We spent the next hour stupidly excavating our car to no avail. Although we didn’t make it to Þingvellir that day, there were a lot of things that thankfully did work out in our favor: (1) the highway was decently busy, and more than one car stopped to give us a hand (2) the weather didn’t turn on us (3) the tow truck (yes…we had to call a tow truck) came quite quickly after we called. The most ridiculous sight of that day was watching the tow truck pull our car back on the road in literally seconds after we had spent the past hour trying to push and dig our car out. The lesson to be learned from this experience: stay on the road.