The next day, I woke up feeling pretty rough. Sleeping in the car was not comfortable for my back, and it was too cold throughout the night. I had breakfast in the car, eating food I bought in a small grocery store the day before.
After breakfast, I set out with the car, after 2 minutes of driving I found a supermarket, and stopped there to get food. Seeing the prices of the country, I had decided it was going to be a self-catering holiday, so I got some bread, some salami, and some condiments in a bottle. This combination was going to be lunch and dinner until I get bored. And some Kleinur for breakfast/snacking.
I really hadn’t made any itenerary for Iceland, so I decided for that day to first visit Thingvellir National Park (or Þingvellir in Icelandic). Thingvellir is a national park that was also the site of Iceland’s parliament. It’s a huge valley that sits between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates; these plates are drifting apart, and more earth is coming from below to fill the gap. This I learned from a walking tour I joined, you can read its Wikipedia article for more details.
The walking tour was great, there were only 2 other people, plus the guide, so it was small and like being with friends on a walk… in the park. We learned why they had the national parliament (Althing) there beginning in the year of 930 AD: the parliament was a gathering of leaders from all over the island; so they had to find a place where there was enough food (fish, or I guess grass for sheep) and wood to stay warm, for the hundreds of people. It also became a summer festival of sorts, with almost everyone from the country gathering to have fun and do business.
Our guide Sheila also pointed out the Icelandic Prime Minister’s summer house. She said the PM would just drive up there in her car, and she found it nice that in Iceland, she could just knock on the PM’s door and have a chat over coffee. After the hour-long tour, I walked around the park some more, taking pictures. I ran into Sheila again, picking up trash that people carelessly drop in the park; it’s supposed to be a national park, things like tissues and candy wrappers would of course ruin the environment. She said being a guide was fun, but this was the less glamorous part of being a ranger. But at least she got to be outside, the worse job is sitting the whole day at the information desk and answering tourists’ dumb questions, like “What is here?”.
After Thingvellir, I drove to Geysir, a hot spring area, and the origins of the English word “geyser”. The geyser named Geysir itself has stopped erupting, but another one in the area, Strokkur, explodes every few minutes. The area here is nice and warm, especially closer to the ground/water.
After a few hours here, it was around 9:30 in the evening. I was not looking forward to another cold night in the car. I got the idea of walking into a hotel next to the hot spring and asking if they have a room and they’d be willing to have it occupied for the night, for a discount. And this worked! It was still a lot of money, but it was 50% cheaper, and the room was nice and warm. If I remember right, they even gave me breakfast.