The Golden Circle

 David had to stay up late for a conference call and was up until 1:30am.  He took this picture out the back window of Kristine's home.  You'll notice that there is no darkness, stars, or other typical night time indicators.  We found this in Denmark, also.  We would put the kids to bed and sit up talking with family, the sun wouldn't go down as normal to trigger winding up for the evening, then you'd look at your watch and it's already 11:00pm but it's still dusk outside.  Iceland was worse.  There was some darkness in Denmark.  We didn't see any in Iceland.  At 1:30am you can see it would be easy to play a game of baseball outside.

Kadence learned one Icelandic word.  Hoppa.  Icelandic for jump.  Kadence and Austin liked to invade Marcus's crib when he woke up and all three would jump around his crib.  It was hilarious.

Today we went to see the sights in the Golden Circle.  First stop Þingvellir (the funny p is pronounced like a th) where the first parliment in the world was held here in 930 AD.   It is also the location where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.  That is the reason for all the volcanic activity that has created Iceland.  Bryson climbed down into one of the cracks here at Þingvellir.  Good thing there was no continental drift right then.

Then the babies climbed down in a smaller crack.

 

A river that had filled one of the cracks was crystal clear and you could see the rift 15 feet down to the bottom of the crystal clear water.

 

Behind us you can see the edge of the division of the continents.

While we were walking around Þingvellir, a tour bus of people came walking up and one of the ladies stopped to admire the twins.  She had a heavy accent and she was telling the babies how to count in Hebrew.  She was more excited about the babies than about the sight seeing.  We finally pried the babies away from her and continued our tour.   We stopped by the river again as we were heading to our car to throw some coins in the water where apparently it's a very touristy thing to do. 

David gave each of us a coin to throw in the water.  Austin immediately threw his in (as he had been throwing rocks into every body of water this trip), turned around, held out his hand, and in a demanding tone said "money!"  He wanted to throw more money in.  No amount of coaxing could convince Kadence to throw her precious, shiny money in the water, though.  David said he know's Kadence gets her frugality from him, so Austin must have learned to throw money away from me.  In the midst of all of this, the Israli lady comes up again and offers the babies some flowers she picked along the path.  Austin looked at the flowers and said, "money!"  She tried to convince him to take a flower and he just kept saying "money".  You couldn't have scripted a funnier exchange.  Against my protest, she finally gave him a coin.  He flipped around, through it in the water, turned back, held out his hand to her and said, "money".  She was a little shocked at first but found it funny how persistent he was about getting more money to throw.  We rounded up all our small american coins and let him sit and throw them in, but in the end he still wanted more money.

Then we headed back to the car and drove to our second stop on the Golden Circle tour.  The original Geysir after which all geysirs in the world are named.  There are actually several geysirs all near each other.  Geysir (the one that is originally named Geysir) only errupts twice a day and is not consistent so there is little chance you will see that one go off.  But there is a smaller geysir near it that errupts about every 6 minutes so we got to see it a few times.  Wouldn't you know the baby-stalking Israli lady stopped here the same time we did.  We grabbed a picture of her this time.  She's the one closest to me.

This is a boiling hot pool with a beautiful blue mineral in it.

Here's the geysir going off.

The third and final stop on our Golden Circle tour was Gullfloss (Golden Falls) waterfall.  It is the largest waterfall in Europe.  It was a truly stunning and beautiful waterfall.

 

 

Everything was going well until Bryson almost fell in...

...just kidding.

In Iceland, they apparently still believe in survival of the fittest because they have very few safety rails and such.  It makes the sights much more beautiful and natural to see, if not a little more dangerous especially with two walking, running, jumping one-year-olds.  But I think it's better.