iggirice Northern Europe: Cruise Day 7

Today is the de facto destination of the trip. Even we are on a cruise, we keep telling people that we are going to Iceland and Reykjavik is most of Iceland, being the capital and having two thirds of the population of the country.

We joined a shore excursion to the Golden Circle that includes the Geysir, the Gullfoss waterfall and the Thingvellir National Park. Unfortunately, I think we got the worst possible tour guide in the world for this. This 'English Guide' does not the the command of the English language and did no guiding whatsoever.

We knew we are in trouble when he started talking and we had to guess what he is saying through context. That was confirmed when he let us off for a brief restroom break. A few other tour buses arrived at the same time and we listened to a lively story about the earthquake that happened in that area, given by one of the other guides. Meanwhile, our guide is nowhere to be found other than beside the bus at meeting time.

Enough whining. The geysers are very interesting although not overly big. Eruptions every 8 to 10 minutes are enough to keep people interested. There was absolute chaos at lunch time, another example of non-guiding but like I said, enough whining.

The waterfall was also quite interesting with several steps and turns but it is a far cry from Niagara Falls that we are so used to. In both places, we got right next to the action, which was nice.

Iceland is big in area but not so many people so most of the places are just empty. They say Iceland is built on volcanic ash and there is plenty of evidence of that through the trip. The ash covered volcanos and the green grass at lower ground provide quite a contrast and interesting pictures.

Our last stop was the Thingvellir National Park where the American plate meets the Eurasian plate. That is too bad that no one providing explanations other than some read text before we arrived. The visit was also cut short because we wasted time having to find missing tour members during our last stop.

Overall, I still think we had a good day seeing Iceland.