On Friday we ended up back in Reykjavik with three days left in our trip. It was Friday and what else do you do in Reykjavik on a Friday night but stay up with the locals and drink all night. Ginger and I called it a night at 6 am, but the downtown bars we showing no signs of stopping. On Saturday, after dragging ourselves out of bed bright and early around noon, we organized a rental car for Sunday, wandered around town and went to see “Harry Potter”. We decided to rent a car so we could go on a tour commonly called the Golden Circle, but we did not want to be crammed on a bus with 75 other people and only have 10 min. at each stop. Plus the car gave us the opportunity to go see other interesting sites and go at our own pace. We still had to dodge all of the tourists at all of the sites, but there was usually a nice break between tour buses so you could see the sites.

The next morning we picked up the rental car and were off to our first stop, a place called Thingvellir, which has a lot going on. This site is where the Vikings established the first democratic parliament in 930 AD and it is also the place where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates come together. These plates are separating at a rate of 2mm a year and over time have created an immense rift valley. Not really much to look at other than a giant split in the Earth, but being in such a historical place was cool.

The next stop took us to Geysir, a place where there are... you guessed it, geysers. There are two geysers to speak of, the big one is called “Great Geysir” and the smaller one called Strokkur, which is supposed to be the world's most reliable geyser in the world, going off about every 6 minutes. The big one did not go off when we were there and from what were told it may be days, months or even years before it went off again. We were running low on snacks and did not think it would be wise to wait for the next great eruption so we took a few pictures and moved on.

Moving on took us to Gullfoss and to our great surprise we found yet another waterfall. This waterfall is said to be the most famous in Iceland and it's double cascading falls got our vote to keep that title. The weather was a bit dreary, but the sun did peak out for a while and really showed why these falls were so well liked. We snapped a few pictures wandered through the gift shop and then motored on down the road.

We had a grand plan to head up into the mountains about 150 km outside of Reykjavik to a place called Thorsmork, this all changed when we realized that our Toyota cracker box might not be up to the task. This fine piece of automotive engineering was in danger of getting high-centered on the yellow dashes in the middle of the road. Now, I had seen all those Toyota commercials back in the states about all the mean, terrible nasty things that you can do to a Toyota and I was game to go down the road to Thorsmork. After a brief conversation, Ginger convinced me that the car looked more like something that had escaped from the Toyota gift shop rather than the show room, and I conceded that Toyota tough may not apply in this case and we were then left to find a new adventure.

After a quick dinner stop we found our new adventure when we picked up two hitchhikers from the Czech Republic. Now to give a bit of background on Iceland, hitchhiking is a normal and safe mode of transportation, except on Sunday, on Sunday your chance of getting picked up are almost zero. These two guys had already been waiting over 2 hours for a ride to Vik and since we had unlimited kilometers, and 16 hours left on our rental contract we felt like giving these guys a ride would be a good thing for us to do. The two guys turned out to be really cool so we decided to play tour guides and showed them to all of the great waterfalls that we were shown about a month ago by our impromptu tour guides Rafn and Suzanne. We eventually got these guys to Vik and they thanked us by buying a few beers and sharing a few stories. We finished our beer and then headed into the twilight of the Icelandic night. We have started to notice that it is starting to get almost dark here and the sunsets last about 3 hours and the sunrises last about the same. We drove on into the night until we found a great place to stay for the night - at the base of a waterfall.

The next morning we woke up with our sights set on the Blue Lagoon. It is said that no trip to Iceland is complete until you have visited the Lagoon and so we figured it would be a good way to spend part of our last day. Much like the pools in Myvatn the water is a stunning blue and the pools are full of relaxing thermal water. The Lagoon was quiet in the morning hours that we were there and we enjoyed a soak while reflecting on our trip so far. After we couldn't wrinkle anymore, we drug ourselves out of the water and head back to Reykjavik, returned the rental car, did a bit of shopping and got ready to head home the next morning.