Iceland 2016 - Epilog

Iceland was amazing, and you should plan a trip there if you haven't already gone; we're already talking about "next time".

We got some great information and suggestions from people who have already gone (thanks Robin!), which definitely helped us choose which parts of the island to see, and when to go.

It's only a 5 hour flight from Newark (about the same as flying to LAX), and the weather tops out around 60F in the summer.

We missed the entire heatwave back home (heard it was hot), and the heatwave in Iceland was... 65F? It definitely didn't hit 70F.

It was odd having to pack a flannel shirt, hat, gloves, snow shoes/boots, etc., alongside flip flops, shorts, and a bathing suit, during the height of summer.

The "busy" tourist season didn't seem that busy to me, but there didn't appear to be an abundance of places to stay outside of the capital. This could be part of the reason so many people chose backpacking, cycling, and camping.

Renting a camper also seemed popular, and might be worth exploring as an option next time. There's so much open space that it didn't look like there was any contention at campgrounds, not to mention the people stopped along the sides of roads, in parking lots, etc.

I had initially balked at the idea of driving around the entire ring road, because it's 828 miles long, and the eastern end of the island is apparently very sparse. Like "fill the gas tank if you see a gas station, because there won't be another" level of sparse. Research had suggested that it was best experienced over ten days, unless you want to start cutting out the multi-hour events (glacier tour, puffin tour, etc.).

But we drove over 1100 miles anyway, just touring around the western and southern regions (and back), so perhaps the full ring road circuit is feasible in a week. Given that we did most of that driving in the middle five days, on average we covered more than 200 miles each day we spent "on the road" (having a second driver made a world of difference).

To say that the "countryside" is rural is an understatement. Settlements that look like a town/village on the map sometimes consist of half a dozen houses and an optional church. Outside of Reykjavík, we didn't see a single traffic light, or even a stop sign; when you can see the road for half a mile in each direction, a "yield" is sufficient.

My biggest concern while driving was trying to pay attention to the road, instead of gazing out the window. Well, that and the sheep. Apparently there are three times as many sheep as there are residents, and they all roam free. There is some sort of sheep round-up festival in the fall. Our waiter one night at Geirland described it as a national sheep-sorting weekend.

I'm not sure the photos successfully convey the magnitude of the wide-open spaces, desolate landscapes, and glacier-topped volcanoes. There are many "drive the ring road Iceland" videos on Youtube, which may do a better job of conveying the scale.

This quote from the Frommer's Iceland guidebook, specifically the "Notes on entering the countryside" sidebar, paints a thorough picture of the south coast experience, I believe:

"You don't need to venture far from Reykjavík to feel as though you're in the countryside, or perhaps on another planet. Mossy lava fields abound, cliff tops swarm with thousands of squawking birds, and thin ribbons of waterfall are haphazardly strewn about mountainsides. But if you're leaving downtown Reykjavík for the first time since you arrived in Iceland, the dramatic landscape is an invigorating shock to the system. The land feels strangely unformed, caught in geological transition. Without trees or thick vegetation obscuring the view, the ever-distant horizon seems impossibly close, yet the tops of mountaintops impossibly high."

Anecdotally, it seems that many friends or friends-of-friends have been going to Iceland in the last few years. If you look at the exchange rate of USD to ISK, the reason might be apparent: since the 2008 crash, $1 US is worth twice as much króna.

Prices seemed high to us (especially at restaurants) but they're not unreasonable after you consider that there's no tipping and that they have very high taxes, all of which is built into the price. In that regard, their prices actually reflect the cost, instead of the way we operate in the US.

We had heard/read that they're a cashless culture, and this turned out to be absolutely true. Rosaria had some local currency, which turned out to be necessary for some of the street vendors, but I didn't use any cash on the entire trip. In some locations, you have to pay to use a bathroom, but even those turnstiles had card readers. Remember to bring a chip-and-pin card for the gas stations, as it's your only option.

While it was obviously not great that my laptop stopped working in the middle of the trip, Sabrina correctly pointed out that it allowed me to get more sleep, since I wasn't up every night writing a blog post. It's more work to do afterwards, but we wrote some notes each night instead. Also, using the iPhone to take photos helps, as every photo is tagged with GPS coordinates.

I enjoyed having more time to write the posts, as it allowed me to be more detailed (I think) and it didn't feel like a race against the clock. Part of the rushed aspect of the first few posts in Iceland was that we were out so late each night, due to the extended daylight; on other trips, we would usually be back at the hotel by 9 or 10PM, so spending an hour writing about the day was less of an issue.

Quick links for photo album and start of this trip.

Iceland 2016 - Day 8: Departure

Day 8 was another beautiful day in Reykjavík.

We had an early breakfast at the hotel, packed up, and returned the rental car. The Hertz shuttle bus driver offered to take us anywhere, so we had him drop us off by city hall. Once he looked up where that was, it was a short ride downtown.

We strolled around the Ingólfstorg (translation from Icelandic) square area, and down by the waterfront.

There's an exhibit of maps at the edge of the harbor that show the locations of shipwrecks off Iceland's coast. I think there were about a dozen of them, covering different timeperiods.

I got a coffee, and we toured around the edge of the marina where the cruiseship tourists find things to do, intermixed with commercial fishing vessels and private boats.

These are whale-watching boats, apparently.

By 11:15 or so, we had worked up enough appetite to sample the selection at the "best hot dog stand in Europe", AKA Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur.

They were quite good.

After lunch, we wandered towards the Harpa, and over to the waterfront.

The "sail like a viking" ship was heading out for a tour. I don't think it quite lived up to the poster.

There were still a few blocks along the water that we hadn't seen yet, so we sauntered along the shore walk, stopping to see Sólfarið ("Sun Voyager").

I thought this was a nice photo, until I did a Google image search for it. I hope they sell some of those as prints.

By then it was almost noon, so we walked back up to the hotel, shuffled some luggage around, and caught the shuttle bus back to Keflavík airport.

The airport is a lively place, full of features like foosball...

Stained glass skylights...

Local delicacies...

And the perfect souvenirs to take home.

Word on the street is that the $450 hairy stool even comes with its own brush! If only we had somewhere to put one of those...

We ate lunch at the airport, and also procured sandwiches for the plane ride. The flight home was relatively uneventful, aside from being delayed a few hours due to weather in Newark.

Iceland 2016 - Day 7: Akranes and Reykjavík

Day 7 started bright and early for Ken and Rosaria; they were picked up around 8:30 AM for the Inside the Volcano tour. (Pictures shamelessly stolen from Rosaria's photo stream. ;-)

They hiked up the side of the Þríhnúkagígur volcano, and then descended on some sort of elevator platform, into the empty magma chamber.

Sabrina and I opted to sleep in, have a leisurely breakfast, and then head north towards Akranes. Around the time they were walking around inside a dormant volcano...

... we were driving through the Hvalfjörður Tunnel under the fjord.

We drove out to the end of the Akranes peninsula, heading for the Akranes lighthouse(s).

The new lighthouse is open to the public, while the old/smaller lighthouse was only reachable by walking over a haphazard stretch of lava seawall.

There were approximately 37 flights of stairs to reach the top, and then a small trap door granted access to the walkway at the top.

We were rewarded with a panoramic view of the town and surrounding harbor.

Having apparently seen the only thing worth seeing in town, we drove back to the center square, parked by the tourist info office, and took a leisurely stroll around town.

Naturally, we had to stop for second breakfast (lunch?), and then once again for coffee and tea.

The guidebook mentioned something about Akranes having a lot of Irish heritage, including a reddest-hair contest during the annual festival, and we found empirical evidence to support this claim.

After we worked off the pastries, we drove the scenic, coastal road back towards the general direction of the tunnel.

Just before reaching the highway again, we found ourselves on the wrong side of a locked gate across the (unpaved) road, and had to use a detour through the middle of some farms. But eventually, we found our way back to the tunnel (and toll booth) around 1:30 PM.

The tunnel is steep enough that you have to downshift to avoid speeding up too much, just as you reach the speed cameras.

Back in Reykjavik, we aimed uphill towards the Perlan, which was just far enough from the hotel that we never made it on the first day in Iceland.

It's sort of a giant glass terrarium, nestled amongst a group of water storage tanks.

But you can walk outside, around the dome, and the view is spectacular.

The Perlan was crowded, what with it clearly being a mandatory stop for all tour buses, so we didn't stay long. But just south of the Perlan, on the other side of Reykjavík University, is the Nauthólsvík Ylströnd (man-made geothermal beach).

As it was the middle of a heat wave at the height of summer, the beach was packed with sunbathers.

The ocean here is tempered by a hot spring, so it gets all the way up to 60F (about the water temp off the coast of Maine at the end of summer).

By then, the amateur vulcanologists had made it back to the hotel, so we headed back to make a plan for dinner.

It was about 4 PM, but Ken and Rosaria had had a late lunch, so we left the car for them and walked downtown to do some shopping before dinner. As our dinner date wasn't until 8 PM, we stopped for a snack at the local 10-11.

Sabrina and I split a hot dog and a chicken tikka masala wrap. They were both excellent. The available additions for the hot dog were potato salad, shrimp salad, raw onions, and fried onions. Being a purist, I declined the adulterations.

We shopped around for a few hours, enjoying the beautiful weather.

"It's been so hot lately," one store employee complained.

Around 6:30 PM, we found ourselves in a bar (Koffin) for happy hour. They were absolutely insistant that I try the two-for-one special on Viking lager.

Just before 8 PM, we wandered a few blocks over to the restaurant.

Sjávargrillið was a recommendation from the woman at the front desk of the hotel. Ken tried the "Taste Of Iceland" appetizer: puffin, guillemot, and minke whale. I think he also had the lamb special, while Sabrina had fish, and Rosaria and I each had the beef platter (some sort of shredded roast and tender cheek meat).

The food was excellent, and then Sabrina insisted that we needed to walk back to the hotel to balance our chakra or something. The warm weather was quickly fading, so we had to leverage all of our layers.

I led us on a detour shortcut, a few blocks up from our usual route to/from the hotel, so we could see Háteigskirkja (translation from Icelandic) and (what I later learned is) the ship captain's school.

It was after 11 PM by the time we were up there, so the sun was just starting to toy with the horizon.

(Sabrina insists I had previously agreed to return to the hotel for an "early" night.)

But there was a squat, flat-topped hill just past the church, with an odd... sculpture? in front of it, and I wanted to take a picture from the top of it (the hill).

If you look very carefully, you can see that there's a person already up there.

As we approached, he briefly hid from view, then popped up, wished us a good evening, and inquired if we were Americans. We assured him that we were, and asked how to get to the top.

Once atop the hill, we had a fascinating conversation with a very talkative, knowledgeable, and polite Icelandic teenager. He had some questions about the US for us, and was eager to answer any questions we had about Iceland.

During the entire conversation (we were up there for 15 or 20 minutes), we watched the sun set and took some photos.

The hill was, in fact, a "water storage facility, with artificial grass on it. Well, the grass isn't artificial, but it was placed here artificially."

He was well-educated, well-read, and fascinated with American culture and society. At one point, he started reciting the US Pledge of Allegiance. I jokingly pointed out that it was treasonous to do so; he was gravely concerned about my accusation.

He wanted to know what is wrong with Mississippi, why so few Americans have passports (only 36%), if we were aware that a higher percentage of Icelanders (96%) than Americans (only 94%) speak English, and why French people think they can come to Iceland and speak French.

I told him that the US is a large country, so it's a long way for people from Kansas, for example, to travel anywhere. He informed us that he had recently met a couple from Kansas, and that they seemed "shall we say... intellectually challenged".

I think he was insulted that they had suggested he should come to the University of Kansas for a great education, as he quoted their average rating on Google (apparently not great) and their acceptance rate (apparently too high).

Other topics of discussion included American accents, college, Islamophobia, U.S. geography, Icelandic culture, the sea captains' school, video games, and anything else that came to mind. All in 15 to 20 minutes.

Eventually, Sabrina noticed the clock tower and rhetorically asked if it was the correct time. Our new friend assured us that it was the correct time, as it always indicates the correct time, and then launched into an explanation about the length of the sunset in Iceland.

We thanked him for the delightful conversation, each shook his hand, and told him that we had to go. He scurried down the side of the hill-water-storage-building, chasing a cat.

He was possibly the friendliest person we met all week, despite requiring some mental gymnastics on our part to keep pace with him.

It was around 11:40 PM when we got back to the hotel.

Tomorrow, we return the rental car, have a few more hours to spend in Reykjavík, and then head to the airport. Our flight is at 5 PM.