The Golden Circle
June 28, 2026
Today, we left Reykjavik and set out to visit the rest of the Golden Circle, on the way to our hotel on the south coast. The first part of our drive was along the same roads we took yesterday. Beyond that, we made our first stop at Geysir, where we took a half hour walk through geothermal fields. We saw the Strokkur Geyser, which went off every five minutes or so in a big but short spurt.
Here is the Golden Circle map again.
These photos show the flowers in bloom on our drive towards Geysir,
plus two views of the steam emitting features at the site.
Not the best video, but this is an idea of an eruption of the Strokkur Geyser.
From there we drove another ten minutes or so to one of the larger waterfalls (by width) in Iceland, Gullfoss. The waterfall has two levels cascading down into a narrow canyon. After getting the view of the upper falls, we walked down 110 steps to a viewing platform of the lower falls. Beyond the platform, the trail descended another 75 feet or so to the lowest point. We could feel spray from the falls, and the power was amazing. At the end of the trip, we agreed this was probably our favorite waterfall.
Top photo is taken from the upper viewpoint, and the other three from the lower portions of the falls-viewing area. Below is a video showing the power of the falls.
We then climbed back up to the busy visitor’s center and rewarded ourselves with coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.
Our next stop was a river gorge with a green tint to the water, Brúahlöð. Below are two photos.
From there we drove to Faxafoss, which is on the same river as Gullfoss, but much less impressive. We then proceeded to the tomato farm at Friðheimer where we have a lunch reservation. There they grow several varieties of tomatoes in hot houses, and supply about 40% of Iceland’s tomatoes. We enjoyed lunch in the garden, where we had all the tomato soup and bread we could eat, plus some heirloom tomatoes and local burrata cheese. The soup was excellent and we were told the farm harvests tomatoes twice a day, even winter. The average day has a harvest of two tons! Impressive.
Top left is Faxafoss. The other three photos are from Friðheimer; clockwise, the greenhouse plants, a dish we had for lunch, and the soup/bread serving station. We sat at the second table for our lunch, just behind the man with a blue shirt.
After our tasty lunch, we drove a half hour to our next stop, Kerid Crater. This crater is a complete circle with a blue-green lake at its bottom. We walked around the circumference and admired the crater lake and the 360 degree view of the surrounding area.
Two views of the attractive Kerid crater, plus a photo of the surrounding landscape which had many
other craters that were not filled by lakes.
After our 25 minute walk, we drove a bit over an hour to our final stop of the day, Seljalandsfoss, one of Iceland’s most iconic waterfalls. Part of its fame is due to the Amazing Race and a Justin Bieber music video having filmed there.
We donned our rain paints, as we intended to walk behind the big waterfall. We climbed up a staircase and braved the mist to get a terrific view beyond the waterfall. The cliff face here has several other smaller waterfalls. We walked to one and as the rain restarted, headed back to our car.
Seljandafos, as we approached on left,
and getting close to behind it on right.
More photos below.
We drove about 15 minutes from there to our hotel, which is tucked up beneath verdant green cliffs.
Above is the area outside our hotel. We had a good view from our room of the Westman Islands, below. Unfortunately, we did not have time to visit the islands on this trip.
