Feeling great after Doritos and M&Ms (burp!) we headed out for the longest day travel, with a lot to pack in.

First up was the last of the Big 3 - Pingvellir. This was where they ran the ancient Alping parliament thing - the oldest ever apparently. These kind of places really interest me. In some ways, it wasn't much to look at (you get a bit blinded by the amazing scenery everywhere after a couple of days), but you could feel the history in the place, and why they'd have chosen this spot. Later I wondered if maybe I'd have chosed the hot springs rather than this valley and had a sort of Jacuzzi/Parliament hybrid thing.

The Alping set laws but it was up to the locals to enforce the decisions (which was probably fun at the time). I noticed that there was a specific pool (see below) for drowning women (about 18 were drowned over the years), but they'd behead the men instead. No idea why you'd have two mechanisms. It might be the long hair - I seem to remember that the axeman made a really bad mess of Mary Queen of Scots which might have been a hair issue. Or it might not, as I suppose a lot of the men had long hair too.

There was plenty of other things to see today - we drove around some of the fjords of the area - hence the long day of travel, and saw some great waterfalls (water coming directly out of the lava) and the largest hot spring in Iceland which pushes out hundreds of litres of 80C water per minute and supplies many homes.

Lady H also managed to guide us to some lava tubes which were off-the-off-the-beaten track. These things are underground hollow tubes in the lava where apparently new lava had flowed while the old stuff had hardened (or something - I'm not 100% as I can't understand why they're empty. Dammit Jim, I'm an architect not a geologist). So, a couple of these tunnels have collapsed, so you can get inside them and peer into the lava. Very cool.

Eventually, we were pretty much behind time to get up to the Snaefellsnes peninsula (or Snaffly Bay as Lady H calls it), so we zipped past yet more Basalt columns and other great sites to get ourselves along to Budir. We'd been told that Budir was fantastic by the same critical assistant at the Folk Museum so we had high hopes.

And we really weren't disappointed. Man, the view and situation of the place was just incredible. We got there as mist began to roll in and dark was falling. We took some photos of the view from the hotel and the hotel itself, but it's one of those sights that you just can't appreciate in a photo. Amazing.

Flushed with this discovery and the lavatube fun, we went to the restaurant for dinner that evening. (Maybe we were just delirious from the Dorito diet). Wisely, the hotel chose not to display the prices, but as the food was described to me as having a 'drizzle of saffron syrup' I started to sweat over the eventual damage. The meal was absolutely delicious, but I couldn't help thinking that there could be some middle ground. There's no shops or life within a 40km radius of this place, and the food was either that or nothing. I decided to be bold and ask for something simpler for the day after. And then staggered to bed.