Although it was wonderful, we were a bit relieved to finish up our tour of Iceland. We moved around a lot and it was hard to get a routine in place to steady us. I am so grateful for the opportunity and the experience was amazing, but it will be nice to stay in one place for a bit.

Here are some final pictures. We did the “Golden Circle” on the last day which has some of the most historic sights in Iceland.

Here is a picture of Gullfoss, the “Golden Waterfall.”

Below is the Silfra rift. You can see the continental drift between the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate. One side is America and the other Europe!  It is in this general area, Þingvellir, that the Icelanders would gather to hold their assembly, the Alþingi (All-thingy is how you pronounce it, I believe). A lot of the Sagas took place here as well.

Here Garett and I are at Geysir, the original geyser. It doesn’t erupt much anymore, but the geyser next to it, Strokker, erupts about every 10 minutes.

And we come to the Icelandic cat of the day. We stayed with Lauki (not Loki, Lauki) at one of our airbnbs. He’s a workin’ farm cat and a good mouser for the warehouse across the way. He’s cuddling with his Puffin toy.

Also, baby or maybe teenage horses. All the grown-up Icelandic horses have bangs. I’m not sure if it’s a fashion thing or they just grow that way. There were so many foals and they are extra small and cute because Icelandic horses are already small and cute.  And also often very fat.

We couldn’t figure out why exactly they would have so many horses in Iceland.  Sheep make sense because of the wool.  But Icelanders don’t use horses to pull plows anymore and we hardly saw people riding them, although there is a booming tourist trade for horseback-riding.  We thought maybe just a love for hippo-culture. But Garett looked it up and it turns out they are often sold for meat to other countries. Poor baby horses.

Here is a house built into a cliff right next to where we stayed. When we inquired as to whether it was some ancient construction method used because of lack of resources or whether old Vikings lived there, we were told that it was used for sheep and created thus because the owner did not want to build another wall. It’s really pretty.

Lastly, an assortment of magazines from a coffee shop in Reykjavík. The ones you can’t see are “Horse and Rider,” my particular favorite, “Practical Sheep,” another edition of “Your Chickens,” and “The Field.” This sums up 95% of Iceland rather nicely.