Golden Circle

Not sure where to drive or what to see while renting a car in Iceland?

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Here you can see a sample of a lot of self drive tours, you can do on your own.

Day trips from Reykjavik

Golden Circle (6-8 hours)
 

Directions through Google Maps.

The Golden Circle is a great day tour from Reykjavik offering you to see and do a lot of things in just 1 day.

We recommend driving through Nesjavellir geothermal area first, It's a beautiful road and offers you great scenery which you simply won't get by doing a normal bus excursions tour. (only available during summer time)

You start off with driving the ring road 1 south and take an exit shortly after you hit the ring road on your left hand side, saying Nesjavellir [431]. Stop at the end of the road at the viewing ramp and take in some of the amazing view over lake Þingvallavatn.

You'll continue on, driving along side the coast of the lake Þingvallavatn.
Next stop will be by Öxarárfoss waterfall just before you get to the national park of Þingvellir.

Go back to the road and continue driving into the national park, you want to take the next exit to the right and park your car in the parking lot there. Take a walk around the park and walk over the bridge of almannagjá which shows the 2 tectonic plates of europe and north america splitting apart, growing roughly 2cm every year!

After Soaking in this historical landmark of Iceland's first parliament, drive through the national park of Þingvellir following road 37
After about 30 minutes, you'll get to Geysir hot springs. It's relatively easy to find parking in the area.

Geysir in Haukadalur, like it is called, is a Hot spring which today no longer is as active as it used to be, although being the most famous hot spring in the world, there are however more hot springs in the area of geysir, which are called : Strokkur, Smiður & Litli-Strokkur.

The name of the hot spring, Geysir, can be related back to 1647 which is when it got it's name, back then it would go off regurarly, it would blast 60-80 meters up in the air up to the 1900's, where it would go as high as 170 Meters!
After that it started slowing down due to the surface of the hot spring being too big.
Locals tried to do what they could to bring it back to life and even put 100kg's of hand soap into the hot spring, thinking it might solve it's problems.

But after the big earthquake on the south coast in the summer of 2000, it got a bit active but is slowing down again.

Once you continue back onto road 37, in about 10 minutes, you will see Gullfoss waterfall.

If you want more information about your day trip : Click here to access google maps.