On Day 1 in Iceland we hit the ground running when our flight landed at 9am. We did a good job sleeping on the plane and weren’t that tired, but we were hungry. Friends had told us about the high prices in Iceland and we learned what they meant upon landing. In the Iceland airport, we got two breakfast sandwiches and two large coffees from Dunkin Donuts. The total? Over $30 USD. Hello! Good thing we had packed our bags with protein bars for lunches every day!

With our $30 breakfast complete, we got our car rental and headed northeast to start the “Golden Circle”. The Golden Circle is a semi-loop around the west side of Iceland where there are many tourist sites to see. It’s basically just marketing, as the entire country has beautiful sites, but nonetheless we made our way to the first stop on the Golden Circle, Þingvellir National Park:

After walking through the National Park, we headed to Strokkur Geysir & Hot Spring area. The entire area smelled like sulfur but it was still really cool seeing the geysir. The Strokkur Geysir reaches around 100ft high these days. The below picture is a good representation of that height – those are people standing beneath it!

Additional pictures of the Strokkur Geysir & Hot Spring area:

Next stop on the list was Gullfoss Waterfall. This was the first stop where we really got a sense of how big Iceland’s environmental features are.

Additional pictures of Gullfoss Waterfall:

We ended our day with a couple more quick stops. After we were done sightseeing for the day, we went to a restaurant recommended by Josh and got what is likely the best Lobster Bisque on the planet.

Click here to continue on to our second day in Iceland!