A day trip exploring Iceland’s Golden Circle

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Ah, the famous Golden circle tour from Reykjavik, second only to the ultimate northern lights tour. It’s a fantastic trip giving you the chance to explore the natural beauty of this volcanic island from your Reykjavik base. So of course, on my trip to Iceland, I had to do it! And trust me, Iceland just gets better and better. If you’ve read any of my other posts about what to do in Reykjavik or hunting for the Northern Lights then you will know how much I rave about Superjeep. Well, this tour was just as brilliant with them!

But why is it called the Golden Circle I hear you ask? Well, I don’t know really. The best Google has come up with is that it’s just a marketing ploy. Let me know if you have any better reasons though, Something a bit prettier would be great!

Taking a Golden Circle day tour is a great way to see some of Iceland’s highlights if you don’t have the time or budget to do an Iceland road trip yourself. So here’s what the tour lets you experience, in just one day.

How many places have you been to where you can say you’ve walked between 2 tectonic plates? I can safely say it’s just 1 for me – The Thingvellir National Park. Here the American and the Eurasian plates are moving apart from each other. Iceland is literally being pulled apart.

The Gullsfoss waterfall is absolutely amazing. Created by  the river Hvítá, the drop on this beauty is a rather long 32m and you know about it; I could feel the force of it just watching it. It’s unusual 2-layered form has made it particularly famous and just generally pretty awesome. Hold on to your hats though, it’s bloody windy there (hence my crazy pompom)!

A fantastic optional extra (but I have to be honest, pretty pricey) with Superjeep is snowmobiling on Langjökull glacier, and it was so much fun. It’s something that I had never done before so was sooo worth it!

As Iceland is essentially a giant volcano, it’s home to the geyser geothermal park. These are formed when water from the surface works its way down to the magma in the earth’s core, gets heated up, creates loads of pressure and explodes. Love it! The Strokkur geyser erupts every few minutes without fail and it’s honestly the best thing watching it trying to guess the exact moment it’s gonna go. When it does, boiling water shoots up to 30m into the air! The only downside to this bit is the eggy smell from sulphur, but hey ho!

A bonus on the way back to Reykjavik was getting to see a second waterfall; the rather cute Faxi waterfall. On a good less snowy day you can go down towards the bottom of the waterfall and get a close up look. Sadly, the middle of winter is not the one for this though! But it’s still beautiful!

So, after a day exploring the natural beauty of Iceland around the Golden Circle, I can safely say that I wish I had had a longer time in Iceland to see more. Everything about Iceland is full of science, nature and surprises and I just love it!

What was your favourite experience in Iceland? Leave me a comment below, I would love to hear from you!