Everybody goes to the Golden Circle. Beautiful wildflowers along the road on the drive. Lots of flat-topped mounds make we wonder if they are archeological sites in waiting. Fog descending and a light drizzle. Very atmospheric drive through green tundra. Finally mastered the car WiFi – did I mention our car is more like a small truck — a Toyota Land Cruiser The terrain reminds me of some of the places from GOT although not sure it was Dothraki scenes or maybe Winterfell. Covid cases are picking up a bit here, probably due to the delta variant — there were zero cases when I booked this trip but now up to 71 and I am sure they will keep going. Oh, well. On the food tour last night the guide-in-training said it is the young people spreading through night life so I don’t have to worry about that.
We made it to the park and the falls but not to the Geysir due to a screw-up by our agent. But we saw it once before so I am not heartbroken. I even have some photos of it from the winter of 2007. It was either drizzling or downright pouring most of the day so I did not take too many pictures for fear of ruining my camera.
I am realizing that Iceland is a country that has truly worked to isolate from the world while still remaining engaged. I always knew the ponies were genetically pure, so to speak, and that once a horse left the island it could never return, thus retaining the gene pool of the original horses brought by the Vikings. And last night I learned from the GIT (guide-in-training on the food tour) that Icelanders can not just name their children whatever they want. They must choose from a book of approved names and there is a pattern to each name which used to mandate that the name of the father be included somewhere. But the country has modernized to the point where the name of the mother may be used either instead-of or in-addition-to the father’s—not quite sure. The country is so inbred that when singles meet at a bar there was actually an app they could use to tell them if they were related too closely to continue a relationship.
And tonight, when I was ordering dinner at the first “real” restaurant we have been to in Iceland and, come to think of it, anywhere (the kind with white table cloths and a live pianist), I asked the waiter if he had a preference between lamb and duck. “Lamb, definitely,” he said. “These lambs are the same as the lambs brought over by the Vikings a thousand years ago. They graze without confinement and on natural grass.” So I tried some. It was delicious.
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