After two days of nigh on continuous hot tubs and enjoying the Arctic scenery all around us, we dusted a couple of inches of snow off the 4WD and actually left the house. The access road to the cottage is gravel and was six inches deep in untouched snow - so we are super happy that we rented the 4WD - it crunched down to the 'main' road quite happily. Today's big outing? Two of the big-ticket items on Iceland's Golden Circle - the Gullfoss Waterfall (which is like saying the Golden Waterfall Waterfall) and the Geysir geothermal area. Now remembering that 'foss' means waterfall, how did Gullfoss get its name? There are many stories (none of which actually involve elves, which we find disappointing). First off - perhaps because the glacial waters have a golden hue when hit by the setting sun. We can't speak to that - having made the effort to leave the house, it actually started snowing almost immediately. Another suggestion is because of the rainbow that sometimes hits the waterfall when the sun is just right (rainbow=pot of gold?). The story we like the most (even without an Icelandic elf), comes from Sveinn Palsson's travel journal. There was an old farmer called Gygur who had amassed a fortune in gold (farming? well food prices are quite high...) and he couldn't bear to think of his gold going to someone else when he died, so he piled it into a coffer and threw it into the falls. We'll go with that. We had a tootle around the visitors centre and timed our exit perfectly - at least a dozen coaches chock-full of tourists were barrelling down the road just as we left. We retraced our steps until we reached the Geysir area - The original Geysir (the gusher after which all others were named) is quiet now - depending what you read it goes off a few times a day (or hardly ever). Unless you are super lucky or very patient and have arms of steel for extended periods of camera holding, it's probably not going to happen - certainly didn't for us (but that's why they invented postcards). Strokkur on the other hand is the old-faithful of this area and goes off regularly - 6 minutes? 10 minutes? Regular enough that if you blink (and miss it), you can hang about in the same spot for a short while with your finger on the shutter-release and get it the next time (just sayin' is all). We took a wander around the Geysir visitors centre and were amazed that all the eating areas were full. At around A$20/€13 just for a bowl of soup, let alone anything more substantial, the food outlets are making out like bandits and people are just lapping it up. Must be really good soup. Well that was our visit to Gullfoss & Geysir. We even had a little side trip on the way home... We'd read about a local shop that sells fruit and veges (cash only). So with kroner in hand we tracked down this greenhouse and sourced some very fresh hydroponic lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and potatoes... must have been craving fresh food. And it's lucky we had actual coins with us... the payment was all by calculator and honesty box and we had great fun divvying out enough kroner and euro coins combined to pay for our haul... around 1000 ISK (A$12). That is around what a single sandwich costs at any of the cafes and it has given us enough salad goods for 3 days. There are ways and means to bring Iceland costs down from prohibitive to manageable. Just not many.