Transcription
Iceland Trip Report8-13 June 2017BASICS:Two adult travellers. After looking at the prices for the various tours offered we opted to rent a car andtour around on our own. It gave us flexibility to start our day and stop when we wanted. With theextended daylight hours it worked really well for us. All of our drives started and ended in Reyjkavik.Flights: Wow Air Montreal, Canada to KEF: 331.98CAD/ 262.50USD per tkt 25 carry-on bag feeIceland Air KEF to Boston, MA: 231.92USD per tkt, free carry-on AND checked bags! Woo hoo!The Iceland Air plane had more legroom and was much more comfortable than the Wow plane.Rental car June 8-13: Avis 358USD. There was excessive instructions and paperwork from the Avis clerkwhen checking out the car, unlike in the states where it’s waiting for you in the lot with keys, ready togo. While doing the paperwork, we noticed an incredibly long and slow moving line of folks waiting tosubmit their paperwork to get tax money back from their purchases.Accommodation: AirBnb 5 nights: 1046USD, 209.20USD/night includes fees & cleaninghttps://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12987902?eal exp 1495689091&eal sig 4edf1cd75648f9&eal uid 709855&eluid 2&euid 5ecdff46-1e7f-2b21-ba7b-5923013a5587#reviewsApprox exchange rate: 1000 Icelandic Krona 10 USD, just had to movethe decimal so working out what things cost was easy, while painfullyexpensive. We did not get ANY Kronas in cash. Everywhere we went tooka credit card, even for really small amounts. Normally we get out at leasta hundred bucks or so in cash, but this time we didn’t bother since our credit card did not charge the 3%foreign transaction fee. A couple of times we came across ‘unmanned’ gas stations that took creditcards, but needed a 5 digit PIN to go with it (which we didn’t have) so had to carry on down the road tothe next gas station. It would be handy to have called the bank and enquired about a four and/or fivedigit pin number, maybe next time Clothing: We packed a variety of clothes that we could layer as needed. Most of the time it was in the50f’s to upper 60f’s, we did get a small amount of rain here and there but it mostly came and went.When it was windy (which brought the temp way down) we wore our rain trousers to cut the wind andstay warmer. We had a couple short sleeve shirts, a couple long sleeved, a pair of jeans, a pair ofhiking/tech trousers, a fleece, rain jacket and bottoms, hat, gloves, scarf, sunglasses with ‘croakie’,swimsuit, flip-flops. We wore our low cut waterproof hiker/cross training type shoes all the time.TRAVEL BOOKS/MAPS:‘Lonely Planet Iceland, 10th ed.’: very useful, surprisingly so! In the past we’ve found Lonely Planetguides mostly aimed at backpacker type travellers but the Iceland one offered a range of advice whichwas nice and helpful. It was the book we used most.‘DK Top 10 Iceland’: have used these guides for many cities and really like them but didn’t use it asmuch this trip.‘Insight Guides Iceland, 8th rev ed’: worthless. Use this at home before you go, but no need to bring italong.
2National Geographic Adventure Map: Iceland 3302: useful, but again it seemed the map used namesand what was listed on the roads was numbers. We did use it though. It was plastic coated so would begood if you’re there during the super rainy/windy seasons and going to be outside with it. Pay attentionto whether the roads are paved or not, makes a big difference in travel times, bumpiness and dustinessof the ride. Also look carefully at your intended route to be sure it connects to a road that does notrequire a Jeep or heavy duty vehicle, you could easily be stuck in the middle of nowhere when you thinkyou’re taking a short cut!Free mini-book guides and paper maps from the tourist office: used these a lot, super informative. Theyare published for each area, south, west, etc.‘Names for the Sea’ by Sarah Moss: a travel/memoir by an English uni professor who moved her familyto Iceland for a year so she could teach. It was actually helpful to read about Icelandic ways and shops.DAY ONE, Thursday, 8 June:Landed a little after 5am, so after a red-eye flight what better thing to do? Soak in a BIG hot tub! Wecould not get into our AirBnb until 4pm so it was the best activity for us. Our 7am entry tickets werepurchased online in advance. Prices fluctuated so if you knowyou want to do this lock in your day/time/price as soon as youcan.After clearing customs and before leaving the arrivals area,there’s an opportunity to shop in duty free, where locals areeven allowed in to shop without plane tickets. Compared toprices in the local shops things were good value so buy a fewsnacks and some alcohol before leaving the airport! Also takenote of the price of things so you’ll know if what you’re buyingelsewhere is a good value.Blue Lagoon: 17600ISK Experience Comfort pkg which included a towel and drinkCheck in was as smooth as a Disney ride, friendly people to help guide and funnel guests in the properdirection. There’s a luggage check near the parking lot if needed. Every locker in the spacious lockerroom had a lock. Showering before entering the pool area is mandatory, soap is provided in the showerswhere there were private stalls. There is no swim suit spinner but plastic bags are available. Be sure touse sunscreen and to reapply it! We saw many ‘lobstah red’ folks who were going to be hurting Near the pool there are several spots to hang your towel and leave your flip-flops. There is also a smallcafé with seating and about 8 to 10 lounge chairs upstairs. The pool was not crowded and was easy tomake your way around. The mud station offered a free whitesilica mud mask and an algae mask. There were many ‘whitewalkers’ wandering around the pool, was funny to see howsome folks really lathered the mud on! There were JamesBond-like life guards (no guns though) positioned around theperimeter of the pool, some were friendly to chat with, butthey were definitely ‘on the job’ looking for flailing swimmers,which apparently happens pretty frequently. There’s a swimup bar to get your free drink or buy one.
3After 2 to 3 hours of floating about we nabbed a couple of the indoor lounge chairs and napped forabout an hour, then hit the pool again. The floating massage looked great, but it was booked up forseveral hours so we didn’t get to try it. It’s possible to book the extras when you book your ticket but wedidn’t and I regret I didn’t book myself a floating massage.After leaving the pool and showering, etc. we had lunch in the onsite restaurant, Lava, that overlookedthe pool. Food was excellent and nicely presented: local fish, fresh bread, salad and dessert. Two pricefixe lunch menus: 12800ISK/ 129.37USD no alcohol, just food. We were in/out of the pool for about 4 to5 hours and spent about 7 hours at the Lagoon total.Drove to Reykjavik, dropped our bags off in our apartment and parked the car. Without our phone orhandheld GPS we were slightly challenged in getting there. The Google directions I printed off usedstreet names and most of the roads used numbers so it took a little longer to find our place but the cityis small so it gave us an opportunity to drive around. We snagged a tourist map from the airport and itcame in handy, on a number of occasions. A GPS would have been nice, but we just couldn’t justify the 16/day rental fee so we muddled along with our books and maps.On foot, we meandered through a few of the local shops (things were expensive and quite cute, teatowels were 27USD!) as we made our way to the Hallgimskirkjchurch where we took the elevator up to the tower(900ISK/ 9.19USD tkt) for the pretty 360 degree view of the city.We weren’t really hungry but felt if we didn’t eat somethingwe’d wake up hungry in the middle of the night. A couple blocksfrom the church was a little pizza/sandwich café called Durum.We split a tasty pizza and local beer: 3900ISK/ 39.38USD thenmeandered through a few more shops on our way back to ourapartment. Sleeping was easy after the red eye flight and longsoak in the pool DAY TWO, Friday, 9 June:We slept in a bit, always tired after a red eye, so had a latemorning start. We swung by Durum and picked up a sandwich(1500ISK/ 15USD) for lunch later, it was pretty big so we askedthem to cut it in half. Next door to Durum was a bakery so wepicked up some croissants, etc. for breakfast the next day. Wewere doing a partial Golden Circle tour, 2 hr one way drive. Again, we were challenged slightly gettingout of Reykjavik without a GPS but managed it in the end. Once out of the city the roads and signage aremore straight forward, when they’re marked.First stop was Þingvellir/Thingeviller NP (ancient seat of world's oldest continually functioningparliament). On the way to the park there are several vistas to stop at and ooh and awe at the beauty ofthe natural landscape. At the park there is: Church: Quaint. Free 1 hr tours of the area leave on the hr, start 10a, check when last tour of daystarts so you don’t miss it. This tour was a highlight for us! The friendly male guide with dark beard wehad was super knowledgeable giving us a good history of Iceland. Nikulásargjá Gorge: included on the tour, better known as Peningagjá (Money Gorge) because it’scustomary to fling a coin into gorge's water and make a wish (which we didn’t do). It’s more than 30 ftdeep.
4 Very small gift shop where it costs 100ISK/ 1USD to use thebathroom and where you must pay to park the car (the machinetook credit cards)! There was lots of construction so they must beexpanding.After the tour we had a picnic lunch near the lake adjacent to theparking lot.After leaving the park we continued on the road to the StokkurGeysir which literally sits right off the road, it was about a 20 minute stop, long enough to see it erupt 34 times and gaze into the pretty pools. There’s a large gift shop and café acrossthe road from the geyser and free restrooms!On our drive to Gullfoss the clouds started to roll in and the wind picked up butit wasn’t raining. There was an annoying visitor standing next to the “do not flydrones” sign flying his whining drone over the falls. We were on an overlookdown by the falls when it started to rain so hurried back to the large visitorcenter with another large gift shop and café. It poured really heavy rain so webrowsed the shop until it let up enough to make it back to the car. We werewearing our raincoats initially just to block the wind and weren’t expecting sucha downpour, so did not put on our rain pants and should have.With the rain clouds it became kind of dark so we decided to head back to Reykjavik. After an hour wewere hungry for dinner so stopped at Kaffi Mika in Fludir (www.mika.is). Their specialty waslangoustines so we had the Cream of Langoustine soup which came with a big piece of homemade garlicbread (2190kr), Seafood Pasta taggiatelle, langoustines, shrimp, garlic bread (4400kr) and a beer:7680ISK/ 77.62USD. The food was fantastic!If the weather had been better (not drizzling) we would havestopped at the “Secret Lagoon” (near Fludir) to soak in the naturalthermal pool, that is apparently surrounded by grass and mossyhillsides and with a sandy bottom. After being blown around atGullfoss and a nice warm meal we were ready to head home andrelax instead. Near to our apt. we stopped at the small grocerystore, Vidir Express on Ingólfsstræti, and picked up some Skyr(“skeer”) yogurt to go along with our pastries and coffee in themorning.It never really got dark at ‘night’ so one of us wore an eye shade tosleep better.DAY THREE, Saturday, 10 June:Destination: Vik!Since we were heading east we thought we’d stop by Costco to see if they had any souvenir type thingsfor the folks taking care of our critters (in Hawaii Costco has the best prices on macadamias). It wasbrand spankin’ new, just opened the previous weekend, and most of the warehouse high storageshelves were empty! Some things were a screamin’ deal, like 1200 Yorkshire Tea Bags for only 15USD.If we’d have been checking bags we would have bought at least one or two, but had to suffice with a
5photo of the humungous bag! Gas was less expensive so we tanked up(interestingly, all the gas stations charge the same, even at the airport).After driving route 1 up and over the mountain with its moonscape terrain, ourfirst stop was the bakery at Hveragerði for the next day’s breakfast.(Unfortunately, the baked goods looked much better than they actually tasted.)We ventured further into the town to go to the Geothermal Park. It cost 10USDto enter and had a very small gift shop and greenhouse. There was a path towander around the grounds and for an extra fee, a spot to stick your feet in themud, which we did not. There were a few steamy spots and roughly every 20minutes a rather large geysir shoots water a couple hundred feet up. It was kind of a sad little park, butalso interesting at the same time.As we were driving along we saw a sign for Urridafoss so stopped to check it out. It was quite pretty withall the purple lupines lining the surrounding hillsides. We also happened across the new LAVA Centreattraction in Hvolsvöllur that someone on the Þingvellir tour told us about, it was right along the roadand had just opened so entry was free. It had timelines of Icelandic earthquakes, spots to stand on toexperience what different size earthquakes would feel like and a room with touch displays with moreinfo. about earthquakes/volcanoes. There was a room that was a sort of big shadowbox, where youcould stand and leave your shadow on the wall and a largeauditorium showing a film about Icelandic volcanoes, whichwas interesting. The centre had a large gift shop and café.(http://lavacentre.is)Next stop was Seljalandsfoss: turn-off is obvious/wellmarked on main road. There’s a great view from the car parkbut don your rain gear and head for the falls! A circular pathtakes you completely behind the falls for a look through thegushing water. Footing is a little slippery in spots, but it’s afun view with lots of opportunity to get heavily sprayed if youwanted. About a half mile further down the road is another smaller waterfall, Gljúfrafoss, that’s worth alook. We drove and did not get out of the car, but it would be a nice little stroll from Seljalandsfossdepending on how much time you have. We headed back to the main road and north a mile or so toSkogafoss which is wide and powerful looking, it’s also visible from the road. We drove up a dirt track afew hundred yards but did not go all the way up to it.We tried stopping at the nature reserve and lighthouse at Dyrhólaey but it had closed at 7p (we shouldhave checked their hours ahead of time to budget our time better) so wecontinued on to Vik to find some dinner. Vik is a very small fishing hamlet sothere weren’t too many restaurant options. Lonely Planet had good reviewsof Suður-Vík Restaurant near the hostel so we went for it. The lower lobbywas packed with folks staring at their phones, upstairs we put our names infor a table and were told it’d be an hour wait. Bummer, it was already 745p.We didn’t want to drive all the way back to Reykjavik hungry so decided towait it out with the masses staring at their phones. Surprisingly we wereseated within ten minutes so felt pleased we decided to hang out. We wereeven more pleased with our meals! Service was fast and friendly and thefood was delish! The menu was varied (not much Thai as their Facebook
6page says) and we both had the local fish, char. We weren’t going to get dessert, but had to try SkyrCheesecake. It was super yummy, not too sweet and had Pop Rocks sprinkled on the top, which at firstwe thought were tiny berries. (Two entrees, two beers, dessert, freebathroom: 11000ISK/ 111.18USD)From Vik we started the journey back to Reykjavik but decided to turn offon Road 215/Reynishverfisvegur and head to the Black Beach, passing acouple small motels and many lounging sheep on the dirt road! We had astroll along the windy, black pebbled beach while we watched puffinscoming and going from their lofty nests on the hillside. There were somereally neat rock outcroppings there too, along with a vary shallow cavecalled Hálsanefshellir. There’s a restaurant at the end of the road by thecar park called Black Beach which was closing up as we arrived and a paytoilet (100 kr/ 1USD), which happened to have the door ajar.As we were driving back to Reykjavik (about 2 hrs) in the semi-twilight, we enjoyed seeing the vistas andtowns in a different light than our morning/day drive. As wepassed by Hveragerði it was almost eerie looking, with billowystreams of white steam rising from various locations all overthe town and hillsides. These could not be seen during theday. Driving over the mountain it was neat to see the nearlyfull moon clinging to the sky and again, to see the whitesteam coming from the earth in random places.DAY FOUR, Sunday, 11 June:Today’s destination: Snaefellsjoekull National Park [ 3hrdrive one way from Reykjavik; ], so our longest drive. Wedecided to head to the park since it was Sunday and many places were sjokull-national-park; http://www.ust.is/snaefellsjokullnational-park/; efellsjoekull-national-park We set outabout 9.30a or so and headed to Durum to pick up some lunch sandwiches then made our way west outof town.As we headed toward the peninsula there were many pretty vistas and places to pull over to take it allin. We stayed on the main roadand circled the peninsulaclockwise, making stops along theroad, but not driving up into themountain: Gerðuberg cliffs: an interestingwall of basalt columns (Ytri Tunga is a beach with seals,we did not drive to see them.) Búðakirkja: a little black church;the gate was locked so we couldnot go into the church or churchyard. Arnarstapi fishing village
7 Dritvík cove Djúpalónssandur Beach: We parked and hiked down to the sea. Londrangar basalt cliffs, where you could look back and see Kirkjufell mountain.Not wanting to face the long drive home on an empty stomach, ‘Lonely Planet’ listed BjargarsteinnGrundarfjordu Restaurant as very good (http://bjargarsteinn.is/). It was a cute little house right on thewater and we even scored a waterside table. The chef held someaccolades and for good reason, the food and service were awesome! Weboth ordered local fish and had a glass of wine and dessert (whichinterestingly, also had pop rocks in it!)(USD130.38)DAY FIVE, Monday, 12 June:Roused ourselves early, with an alarm, so we could be on the road by 9.30a, we were going to TheVidgelmir Cave today and our tour started at noon! (www.thecave.is; 6500 ISK/ 65USD tkt) We werechamps at navigating our way out of the city now! It was a pretty drive with lots of rolling hills. Therewas some signage when we neared the turnoff from the main road for The Cave, but did not realize thelast stretch was five miles of ruddy dirt road. It was also disconcerting that there were no further signsreassuring us we were on the right “road”, it seemed like we were driving on a farm track. We flagged acar down that was coming towards us and they confirmed we were indeed on the correct road and itwas totally worth the effort of getting there. We made it with only five minutes to spare, a little more‘time to spare’ would have been nice.Our Cave Guide was super knowledgeable;she had a PhD in Volcanolgy. We were givenhard hats with head lights attached andthere were a total of 8 in our group. Wewalked a short distance through a very rockyfield then down some stairs into a hole in theground. The tour took about an hour and weleft feeling like we learned something. Thereis a (free) toilet in the check-in hut and acouple of chairs, but no food.We had a leisurely drive back to Reykjavikstopping at: Husafell (husafell.is): Tried to have lunch in the hotel but it was closed, was directed to the café whichhad a buffet lunch. 3 Falls that are next to each other: Hraunfosser & Barnafosser & Trollfosser Pretty. Was nice to walkalong the trail along the river and falls. There was a small gift shop.
8 Reykholt historic site: not much to see really. A church which we didn’t enter and a medium sized giftshop and 1 toilets. It was eerily quiet and no one around.Instead of returning via the same road we took a smaller road (512?) that joined (52) and headed up andover the mountain. It was quite pretty andquite narrow in a couple of spots. We had theroad/track to ourselves, saw no people orother cars, however, as we neared Uxavatnlake there were a few houses. There was nosnow, but lots of pretty purple lupines. The(52) turned into (337) which took us to themain hwy 37.After stopping at the HagkaupGrocery/Hypermarket to pick up somebreakfast and plane foods, we made our wayback to our apartment, parked the car thentook off on foot in search of dinner. Therestaurant, Messinn, had a wait, so we put our names down and strolled through the town for about anhour. Dinner at Messinn (http://messinn.com/) was super yummy! We had the’Fish Pans’: Icelandic“Plokkfiskur” (a traditional family meal cooked and served in a cast iron skillet) and the Ling(12,150SK/120.48USD including two glasses of wine)DEPARTURE DAY, Tuesday, 13 June:Navigating out of the city was a challenge, again, but we left plenty of time since we didn't know if therewas going to be traffic. Made it to the airport rental car return but it was a little tricky since signage wasnot great. We had to tank up the car before returning and the airport gas station would not take ourcredit card since we did not have the PIN to go with it. I think we used our debit card instead. We had towait almost 15 min for the shuttle van to take us to the terminal which was a bit annoying.Clearing customs was easy. We stopped at Duty Free and bought a bunch of chocolate and black lavasalt to give as gifts.Things we didn’t do: Other than drink evening cocktails and breakfast coffee and eat pastries, cook a meal in our AirBnb. Go to a local pool. I wished we would have gone to one just to see how the locals experience it A coach tour. The guides we met at places we visited were all super knowledgeable and friendly. Ifthere was one tour I’d have considered doing, it would have been the Golden Circle tour that includeda snow hike with crampons and ice picks something we wouldn’t have done on our own. See the Northern Lights: it was summer and never really got dark. Other than going to The Cave, stress about being anywhere at a particular time!
Iceland Trip Report 8-13 June 2017 BASICS: Two adult travellers. After looking at the prices for the various tours o
