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| clarence on top of random old doom hut out the back |
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| laters fagrahlio |
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| gullfossss |
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| alien grass |
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who me? on this blog? naaaah
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| moniezzzzzzz |
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| glasssssy |
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site of the first parliament building
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| i tried ok |
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| k, i was getting sprayed on here. oops. |
We sadly left our amazing farmhouse behind and started the drive to Reykjavik. We were taking Icelands most knows tourist trap, the 'Golden Circle'. This is a route you drive, where the scenic attractions are naturally one after the other. Obviously it was coming in to winter and colder days when we were there, so the first place we stopped off - Gullfoss - was freeeeeezing. It was windy as ever so that didn't help, so everyone rugged up with hats and double jackets and scarves and mittens and ran to the gift shop. Mmmm immediate thawing of the face. So many insanely cool hats. Like all kinds of soft soft fur and crazy man designs and seal skins and even my favourite chocolates from London. Fantastic,
Anywho, more about Gullfoss yeah? You can hear it roaring away from the carpark, and when we finally decided to brave the short windy walk down there it was pretty amazing. It doesn't look like too much in the photos, but it's like seeing the
>Huka Falls< in Taupo - New Zealand for people who aren't my family reading this - when you see it in a photo, it's like, wow that waterfall looks cool but yeah hah just another body of h2o mofos. But thennnn when you get infront/beside/kinda close but not too close to it, and it's all powerful and roaring and somehow ridiculously
dangerous looking, you rethink the semi sarcastic wow that was in your head and (if you're like me) do a bit of Knives (from Scott Pilgrim) wooo-oo-oo-ooo-ooowing and take like 20 photos that are basically the same.
Cos it was so cold, all the grass off to the side side of the falls had slowly collected the spray and re-frozen a hundred times, so it looked like another alien landscape. Pretty rad. After watching some rather brave people walk out onto a lump of slippery looking grass right by the mouth where all the falls dumped, and having a chuckle at an old lady walking slowly along saying....so...coooold.... in a cute wee helpless voice, we jumped back in the warm warm car for the next destination. Geysir the Geyser.
That lovely smell took Claire back to her Rotorua childhood, and many a 'who dunit' jokes, har har, and we were in sulphur central. Unlike Rotorua, this geyser went off like 4 times in 15 minutes, and was huge. Onwards!
Last(ish) stop was Thingvellir National park. It reminded me of the Ice Age movies, in that there was this cliff like wall all the way along one side of the park. Turns out this is "the rift valley that marks the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Which, after yet another short google attempt, turns out goes right through the middle of Iceland, and is slowly growing apart. Sounding similar NZers? Anyway, there were some amazing mirror like patches of water when we first got there, that people had taken to throwing coins into (we did) and then a really nice/freezing walk right up to the ridge, and along it to a few waterfalls and with a nice view out over the surrounding countryside. The sun was setting (it felt like it was always rising or setting in Iceland, never just up) in the background which make the further away hills looks nice and red/orange. While over there we had this idea we were going to 'whisp' some waterfalls. If you don't immediately know what I mean,
>HERE< is what I mean. It was hilarious as whenever there were waterfalls it was either too sunny or bright or no one had a tripod. Or the battery went flat. Anyway, we tried, none of us had done it before, nor really even particularly like the look. Inception I guess, once it was in our heads, had to be done.
It was all amazing, beautiful, crazywildweirdnotrees landsscape, rocks/cliffs/hills/church/amazing. We left there to head to our apartment in Reykjavik, which turned out to be a pimpin top floor luxury beast by Room with a View. One downside was there were two double beds in one room but hey, we're all friends and who doesn't love sleeptalking? On a main shopping street right in the middle of town, right down the road from some deeee-licious pizza shop (seriously, best pizza ever) and across the road from quite a hip n happening (I think) bar/restaurant which we ended up at. Can't remember the name darn. Ah well. It was a food fest/house red spectacular that's for sure.
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