Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean I’d finished my magazine, the kids were sleeping and I needed a break from my book. I didn’t really have time for a whole movie so the “Visit Iceland” videos on the airplane entertainment system became very appealing. I watched one on South Iceland, the region we were visiting and that’s when I saw something magical: bread baking in the ground at a geothermal bakery. In the ground! And oh goodness, you know how I love bakeries. I knew that as soon as I had internet I needed to look up this bakery immediately (Here’s the link!) and figure out how to work it into our itinerary. Thankfully, there was also a pool attached to this place that looked pretty kid-friendly. And we found out that every day around 2:30pm (depending on a tour that shows up-ours ended up starting half an hour early) you can see this bread being made and I emailed ahead to make sure we would be able to do the tour. So after starting out at Hotel Ranga and heading through some of the Golden Circle sights: Gulfoss
we ended up at Laugervatn Fortuna Geothermal Baths where the bread magic happens.
In reality the tour is pretty much over in 15 minutes and though you get to taste it after it’s a hefty 1500 isk per person to see this (though they let us watch for free this time. Thanks!) but it’s really neat and the rye bread is delicious and I doubt you’ll ever get to see this style of baking anywhere else. I can’t believe that the lake water nearby the baths gets SO hot that it can bake bread. But because a tour comes to see this bread being made, the baths themselves can get very crowded right after the tour happens. We heard the group was leaving at 4pm so we decided to head to Thingvellir to complete the “Golden Circle” and come back to a much emptier pool. (That’s the nice thing about having a car in Iceland.)
And when we returned, the baths were lovely. The pools were refreshingly warm after a long day of adventure. The kids liked exploring the neat water features they had in the pool and the hubby and I liked getting a chance to relax. The hubby really wanted to try and swim in the lake (there’s an entrance at the baths) except the scary warning signs made it sound like it could potentially be super hot (100 degrees) in some places, so we didn’t and that was okay. Hanging out here was the perfect way to end a day.
And all of this happened because of that bread commercial on the airplane. (Thank you tons Iceland Air.)
(PS. we ate in the cafe here too and it was tasty.)
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)
That would be quite an experience to watch bread being baked in the ground with geothermal heat!
It was pretty amazing! And delicious too!