Today was the last full day of our cruise. We arrived at Reykjavik early in the morning. The excursion we were booked on was the Golden Circle and a trip to the Blue Lagoon.
Our first stop was the rift valley between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. I'm taking the photo standing on the North American side and the mountains on the other side of the valley are on the Eurasian plate.
The next stop was Thingvellir, which is where the Icelandic "parliament" used to meet from the year 930AD. The flag pole in the photo shows the exact meeting spot of the chieftains.
And then ...... Yet another foss. This one is Gullfoss (AKA the golden falls).
It was a fairly packed day, so hot on the heels of Gullfoss we visited the hot springs where I managed to get a shot of the geyser Strokkur erupting.
We had a late lunch at a very interesting place. It was a huge greenhouse complex where they grow tomatoes. The greenhouses use geothermal heating and the lighting system (also based of geothermally generated electricity) provides 17 hours of "daylight" for the plants. So the tomatoes grow year round and they deliver 2000lbs of tomatoes to the warehouses in Reykjavik every day. The owner has recently decided to go into the tourist trade on the side and one of the greenhouses includes a restaurant where we had tomato soup, chicken and tomato kebabs and cheesecake with a tomato jelly for dessert. I must admit the tomato jelly cheesecake was too weird for me and I scooped all the jelly off the top before eating the rest of the cheesecake.
Another sideline that the owner of the place has is a stable where he owns and breeds Icelandic horses. The Icelandic horse is directly descended from the horses that the original settlers brought with them in 870AD. No horses have been imported to Iceland since then. It also has a unique gait called the tolt. We were treated to a short demonstration of the horses in all 5 gaits. (walk, trot, tolt, pace and canter/gallop). Afterwards we got to visit the horses in their stables and pet them.
The last stop of the day was at the Blue Lagoon, where we got to dunk ourselves in the hot water for a couple of hours with a free drink. It was very relaxing.
We finally arrived back on board around 8pm, in time for a late dinner. We now have to pack and get our cases outside the room for pick up before we got to bed. Disembarkation is early tomorrow morning.
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