One of Iceland’s most popular tourist sites is the geothermal hot spring area of Geysir and Strokkur. These days, Geysir isn’t very active so the main attraction at the popular spot is Strokkur – which you can (sort of) see below. Geysir & Strokkur are the second stop on the Golden Circle tour, which we booked through Reykjavik Excursions. Geysir is a little more touristy than Thingvellir National Park, with a couple of restaurants onsite and a large tourist centre and shop. However, it wasn’t at all tacky and the onsite canteen-style restaurant served some really good food!
When you arrive at Geysir, it isn’t immediately obvious where the hot springs are in relation to the car park – but the lines of tourists soon lead you in the right direction. A short walk across the road from the tourist centre will bring you to a selection of smaller bubbling hot springs, with the larger Strokkur geyser further ahead. Geysir, now less active, is further along than Strokkur. As we didn’t have long at this stop, we stayed at Strokkur to wait for it to erupt.
And sure enough – it did! To be honest, all we really saw was steam rather than a huge upward jet of water – but it was still impressive. I’d love to return with a little more time to spend waiting for a larger eruption – normally the eruptions are around 20 metres high. Typically, Strokkur erupts every 6 to 10 minutes, so you shouldn’t have too long to wait.
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I personally found the smaller hot springs dotted along the footpath to be more interesting than Strokkur on this occasion – probably because less people were gathered around watching, making them much easier to see. Geysir is such a popular tourist site which unfortunately meant a lot of people were gathered around Strokkur making it harder to get a good view – which was frustrating, but not too surprising.
So, my advice to you would be – definitely walk up and see Strokkur, and wait a few minutes to hopefully see the water erupt – but don’t fixate purely on just this geyser, as it might be very busy.
Make sure to have a good look at some of the smaller hot springs along the footpath – they seemed very active, with a few of them consistently bubbling and steaming away. Just like the below photos!
Aren’t they cool?
We did enjoy visiting Geysir and seeing the hot springs and Strokkur, but it wasn’t as impressive as I had imagined. It’s a spot worth visiting as it’s so interesting, but don’t get hung up on getting *the* perfect photo of the geyser erupting.
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The next stop on our Golden Circle tour was Gulfoss – an iconic waterfall that was by far my favourite spot. I can’t wait to show you the photos!
If you enjoyed this post, you might like to read the rest of my Iceland posts.
