Wondering if there are any detours on the Golden Circle that are worth exploring? The Golden Circle has its three main attractions but there are also a whole lot of extra stops and detours you can make on the way. Detours that are well worth checking out.
The one I’m going to tell you about in this post is not exactly a detour. More like an extra stop as you don’t have to add any extra kilometers to your route. It’s right there by the road.
Laugarvatn is a tiny village by a lake located between Þingvellir and Geysir which both are a part of the Golden Circle. There is so much heat in the earth at Laugarvatn that it’s literally boiling in some places. The inhabitants have taken advantage of this heat in different ways for generations.
Fontana is a company located at Laugarvatn, right down by the lake. They offer a very nice geothermal bath with a few different hot tubs, saunas and the option of diving into the cold lake. If that’s your thing that is. Personally, I didn’t really feel like swimming in the cold lake. It suited me better to sit in the warm sauna, admiring the lake from a distance. This being possible as there is a big window in one of the saunas, overlooking the lake. A really nice touch I think. A sauna with a view. A great option for a detour on the Golden Circle.
Geothermal Bakery
But that’s not all. Fontana also offers a short guided walk down to the lake where they bake bread in the boiling hot ground. Their own Geothermal Bakery. The walk starts in front of the entrance of the geothermal bath. It only takes a few minutes to reach the sandy beach by the lake where the earth is boiling, making it an ideal place to bake some bread in the ground. How cool is that?
If the Geothermal Bakery has a scheduled “bread-walk” the day after, the guide brings a pot with bread dough that he digs into the ground down by the beach. Otherwise he goes straight to showing you how to find bread that is ready to eat and digs it up. Then the group walks back to the house to taste the freshly baked bread. Of course you also get all kinds of interesting information about the area and this baking process during the walk.
I found the bread tasted very good. It actually took me back to my grandmother’s kitchen as she used to bake bread very similar to this one when I was a child. She didn’t bake it in the ground though. You can also bake it in a regular oven. And so she did back then. In fact, so can you when you get back home as the guide will give you the recipe if you’re interested.
The bread’s main ingredient is rye and it’s sweet and dark brown. Some think it tastes more like a cake than a bread. Which is understandable. It’s way sweeter than bread normally is. Maybe that’s why I think it tastes so good 🙂
When you eat Icelandic rye bread it’s crucial to add a lot of Icelandic butter to it. That’s a delicious combination. Don’t even try to spread the butter (especially if it’s cold and hard), you’ll only mess up the bread. Just put a thick layer of butter on your slice and you’re good to go. Yummy!
You have two options when booking this tour. You can either choose the basic one or the one that is a little bit more expensive. Then you also get smoked trout to put on your bread. The trout comes from the lake and is smoked on a farm close by. A delicious local product. A classic topping for Icelandic rye bread. Very tasty.
I don’t often eat rye bread like this today but I did as a child. When I was growing up, a typical Monday dinner in Icelandic homes was some boiled haddock (a white fish, similar to cod), boiled potatoes and butter. The grownups often ate some kind of hot melted lamb fat called “hamsatólg” instead of butter. I never ate that. Thought it was disgusting. And still do actually! As a side to this typical everyday Icelandic meal back then, was rye bread with butter.
I also recall often having eaten skyr (a thick Icelandic yoghurt) and rye bread for lunch. At my place we sometimes got “hangikjöt” as a topping on the bread. Hangikjöt is smoked lamb meat and goes very well with rye bread. It’s sold and eaten as a topping on bread but also as a traditional main dish over Christmas.
I truly liked this short but interesting bread-walk and found the rye bread very tasty. So if you’re thinking of taking this detour on the Golden Circle, and stop by at Fontana, I recommend you to check it out.
You can read more about the facilities at Fontana and the “bread-walk” hereIf you liked this post and think some of your friends might be interested in reading it too, please help me spread the word. I’d really appreciate it if you’d share it on social media.
Until next time!
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