Iceland’s entire fleet of rental cars was spoken for, so the full-day excursion was our one chance to get out of the city and see the countryside. The boys and I were there on sufferance -- originally, the outing was only for the scientists. I’d like to thank the senior physicists who quietly rioted when first told that their spouses wouldn’t be allowed to tag along. Especially since I’m not sure they realized they were signing up to share a bus with a loquacious five year old and a one year old with big opinions and even bigger lungs.

Geysir was our first stop, and also where our status as second-class-citizens first paid off. While the scientists ploughed through their fancy three-course lunch, we scarfed hotdogs from the gift shop café and got to watch the geyser do its thing at least three times. The original Geysir has run out of puff (the theory goes that it was accidentally sabotaged by eager tourists trying to make it perform more often), but neighbouring Strokkur does a bang-up job roughly every ten minutes, and teensy Litli Geysir (at right) bubbles away photogenically. Adding to the thrill factor for parents of small kids is the fact that these seething cauldrons of boiling water are roped off with nothing more than, well, a rope.

After the glacier adventure (see previous post), both boys dozed off on the way to Gulfoss, the Golden Waterfall. A fellow traveler kindly offered to stay on the bus and keep an eye on them, so Richard and I grabbed coffees from the gift shop and ran all the way down to the waterfall. It was beautiful, thundering away into the gorge with the sun striking photogenic rainbows into the cloud of spray. A local farmer's daughter once threatened to throw herself into the falls, to save them from being turned into a hydro-electric dam. Brave Sigrí∂ur Tómasdóttir! (If you're picturing a buxom Icelandic Ophelia, rest assured she never acted on her threat and lived to a ripe old age, if the hatchet-faced likeness on the monument is anything to go by).

Having speed-dated down the path, we guilt-tripped our way back up and found the boys awake. So it was back down to the gorge, where I hung back with Toby while Richard took James up to the head of the falls. This meant I had an excellent view of my heedless husband snapping photos while his first-born ambled away towards the edge of a sheer drop -- see the ant-like people on the rocky outcrop in the photo above? -- held back only by one of those token ropes Icelanders are so fond of. Bloody hell. I’d delivered them from the crevasses of Langjökull, only to watch them do a Sigrí∂ur Tómasdóttir at Gulfoss? Of course they were fine; and an hour or two later, so was I.

Look at the daredevils, minutes after I hurtled down the path to rescue them from a watery debacle. Butter wouldn't melt:
Back on the bus, Toby was in a state of simmering outrage at having to be strapped into his seat. We mostly kept it at bay by spotting handsome Icelandic horses out the window. These gorgeous creatures roam free and are absolutely everywhere. Which is good, for it is a lucky linguistic fact that a child cannot click his tongue to indicate “horsie” and scream at the same time.

Meanwhile, the physicists on the bus were going blah blah blah, all over town, or at least all over South Iceland. They’d been chivvied into discussion groups, the idea being that the day's exposure to magnificent scenery would stimulate novel approaches to old problems. James positioned himself at the heart of one group and shyly offered some equations of his own (e.g. Earth divided by small kind of ants = infinity). Then he and the inventor of a large chunk of modern cosmology fell asleep on each other. Aaah, kids and scientists; a cockle-warming sight that runs a close second to those black and white posters of muscled men holding newborns. It felt rude to snap a photo, but I can assure you it was almost as cute as the time a two year old James nearly went under the wheels of Stephen Hawking’s wheelchair.

The last stop of the day was the small coastal town of Stokkseyri, where the physicists were scheduled to have a lobster feast at Vi∂ Fjörubor∂i∂, a seaside restaurant famous for, well, lobsters. People book well in advance, and travel all the way from Reykjavík and beyond for their special lobstery night out. I figured the boys and I would wing it once we got there, maybe grab some fish and chips at a handy chippy.

Well. Stokkseyri is a tiny town. There was the lobster restaurant, nestled against the rocky breakwater, and off in the distance a wee convenience store. My endurance feat on the glacier? A mere preamble to the main act: dinner. Richard headed off with the other physicists to the brazier-lit banquet hall for the all-expenses-paid lobster feast. I ferried two hungry exhausted boys into the flash restaurant. It was solidly booked but the maître-d' squeezed us in, with the unspoken understanding: “Eat fast.” We sat next to a disgruntled-looking family group -- escapees from a travelling circus, I guessed, given the limber way they managed to give us the hairy eyeball and the cold shoulder at the very same time.

Up to the challenge, I ordered at speed. 1 bowl lobster soup, 2 chix nuggets and chips. "And drinks, madam?" I scrabbled for the menu: 2 apple juice, 1 Viking beer. (Hey, I’d earned it.) In the ten minutes it took the bread basket to arrive, the boys behaved impeccably, while I aged ten years under the frosty glares of the party of four to our right. We were down to just crumbs, and things were beginning to look dicey when the real food finally turned up. I sat poised with a napkin in each fist, ready to deal with meltdown and spillage.  You know what they say, she who seeks peace must prepare for war.  My astonishing offspring took turns hoovering up the delicious and expensive lobster soup, without spilling a drop. (At $29 for the bowl, the mouthful I managed to get was worth every krona). “More?” inquired Toby as James delicately slurped the last spoonful. Crikey. I was dining with Little Lord Fauntleroy and his long-lost baby brother, Oliver Twist.

The whole time, my disapproving neighbours -- who had still not addressed one word to each other -- clucked and sighed and shot daggers at us, while perusing their guidebooks and cracking open lobster claws without much enthusiasm. I nibbled blamelessly on a chicken nugget and complimented my lads on their phenomenal table manners. When Toby finally hit his well overdue limit and slid under the table in a boneless heap, I pounced on a waitress, who sweetly offered to pack up the last of the chicken and chips for us. Suddenly the Grimm family came to life, exchanging actual remarks as well as nudges and eye-rolls. Our gluttonous foreign ways turned out to be the icebreaker they had been waiting for all evening! Miss Manners would have been so proud of us.

With the scientists still only halfway through their banquet, we had to amuse ourselves for an hour or so before it was time to head back to the big city. Unfortunately, the Icelandic Wonders exhibit next door -- which boasts elves, trolls, a chunk of glacier and some faux northern lights! -- had just closed for the evening, as had the gruesome Ghost Centre upstairs. The local family fun park -- with its ominous-sounding “jumping bladder,” where the "adventure do happen" -- was also long shut, as was the Museum of Hunting, a taxidermical delight. So we zipped on our jackets and went to make our own fun in a playground over the road.

It wasn’t much: tire swings and a decrepit climbing frame, but we did our best. Then a local boy appeared with a soccer ball, and he and James negotiated a game of pick-up footie. David, who turned out to be thirteen, was a very sporting fellow. He kindly lowered his game to accommodate this overconfident and under-skilled young visitor. By now it was getting on for ten p.m. Hopping up and down to keep warm, Toby and I cheered the two big boys up and down the little fenced soccer pitch, as the sun finally started to think about drifting down the sky. It wasn’t on the day's official itinerary, and it didn’t involve ice, water (boiling or otherwise), sheer cliffs, or lobsters, but for James, this impromptu small-town soccer international was an Icelandic wonder all the same.