As I sat eating my breakfast, watching the sun rise through the cabin windows, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad that we were leaving Hestheimar today. I had really enjoyed my three nights stay here. I loved how peaceful the place was and how comforting the cosy cabins were. I would have happily stayed at Hestheimar for the rest of our trip. As it were, we were heading to Laugarvatn for one night before moving onto Reykjavik for New Year.
Before checking into our accommodation in Laugarvatn, we continued past this tiny town to visit two of the most popular attractions in the country. Firstly, Geysir, which attracts so many visitors it has it’s own conveniently located gift shop and cafe. Actually, to be completely accurate, we never walked as far up as Geysir. Given it was freezing cold and the path was treacherously icy we were quite content at seeing it’s neighbour Strokkur. Strokkur is actually the more active and reliable of the two geysers and errupts every 4-8 minutes. It was a really windy day so a lot of the erruptions were actually side-ways! None-the-less it was pretty damn cool to see and we saw a few eruptions before we headed off.
Located a little further up the road from the geysers is the famous waterfall Gullfoss, which translated means “Golden Falls”. This had to be one of my favourite sights of the trip. It was simply breathtaking. Parts of the waterfall were frozen, there was masses of snow and some awesome looking icicles had formed. It truly was amazing to see.
With the sun setting we headed back to Laugarvatn. We were staying in the Golden Circle Apartments, which were basic but pleasant. Some of the group headed off to visit Fontana, which is another geothermal spa. Ross and I decided that we were going treat ourselves to a meal at Restaurant Lindin instead. The owner and head chef was very friendly and was willing to prepare me some lovely vegetarian dishes. I had delicious vegetable soup to start, a vegetable bean steak with home-made tomato salsa and mixed salad and then finished with rhubarb tart for dessert. The meal was amazing and I was absolutely stuffed afterwards. I would thoroughly recommend eating at Lindin.
Being so full I was pretty tired after my meal and decided to have an early night. It was just a real shame that the sofa bed, which Ross and I were sleeping on, was horrendously uncomfortable. Unfortunately, I therefore had a rubbish night’s sleep and also woke up the next morning in quite a bit of pain. Damn fibro!
