Iceland
Overall / Observations
​We booked a 5-day Iceland's Northern Lights Independent Adventure Vacation through Gate 1 Travel. Keep an eye out for sales. Tour included flights, hotel / breakfast, and northern lights tour.
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4.5 days / 4 nights in Reykivek perfect. Left Seattle Thursday afternoon (overnight flight) and came home Tuesday night.
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Expensive - particularly food and alcohol. Save some $ by packing a lunch from your breakfast buffet, happy hours for drinks, etc.
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Alcohol is not sold in grocery stores, except low % beer. Alcohol stores do not open at night.
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Weather - changes minute by minute from snow, rain, hail, brief moments of sunshine to crazy gusty winds.
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Clothes - Warm / water repellent hooded coat that covers your butt, Rain pants, waterproof gloves, comfortable snow boots and a hat if you don’t have a hood a must. Glad we also brought our ice spikes. Brought our long Johns but didn’t need them. Inside of restaurants, shops and bus very warm so wear layers you would get hot inside. Don’t even try an umbrella.
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Sunlight was minimal. Usually, gray twilight feeling. Sunrise at 10:30, sunset was 5:00.
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Driving - unless you have lots of experience driving on ice, slush, snow, in intense wind during the wintertime let the professionals drive you to the sites. Saw a few cars off the road stuck in the snow
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Don’t put your backpack on floor of bus. Will get wet.
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Restaurants are small. Highly recommend you make reservations in advance. Also take into consideration the bus stop your tour will pick you up and drop you off whenever planning each night where you are eating. Particularly if you aren’t planning on showering after your tour and going straight to dinner.
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Breads / bake goods everywhere and very good.
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Hotel - Center Hotels Plaza. Good location, great buffet breakfast, clean small room, comfortable bed, comfortable lobby with a bar to hang while you wait to check in. Note there are many Center Hotels, so Plaza was the key word.
Favorites
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Breakfast at our hotel. (Center Hotels Plaza)
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Dinner - Rok (tapa style so were able to experience more) and Messinn (for fish)
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Bar - Drunk Rabbit -party feel, live music at 10pm.
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Happy Hour - Kaldi’s
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Waterfall - Gullfoss
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Unique experiences - Sky Lagoon, Solheimajokull Glacier, and Northern Lights. If you can’t sleep, check weather. Slipped out at 1am, walked 10 minutes toward the water, and got our only glimpse of the northern lights.
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Coming back to do - Ice cave and experience the dancing of the northern lights (was too cloudy).
Day 1 - Reykivek
We arrived very early in the morning. Quickly got through passport control. Looked like they were putting in passport machines
Prebooked flybus (including return). Bus is waiting right outside of the airport seems as soon as they fill it up it goes. Note where they load your bags, because you retrieve your own. Changed buses at bus station get a stop closer to our hotel (number 1, but not the first -no rhyme or reason for the stop numbers). Whole process took about 1.5 hours.
Left our luggage at our hotel to walk around town. Forced ourselves to stay up by walking the town of Reykivek. Very walkable to the church, rainbow street, sun voyager, etc. Started with breakfast at Laundromat Cafe. Interesting decor. Food was (of course) pricey and just okay.​ Walked up Rainbow street
​​​​​​​​​​​​To the church - Hallgrimkirkja. Free to go inside. Can pay to go up the tower for a great view of the city. Church is also nicely lit up at night and you can see the stain glass windows​​​​
​​​Looped around to the Sun Voyager
And then Harpa Center. Beautiful inside
Happy hour (just select drinks, no food deals). Hours differ from establishment to establishment. Sometimes starting as early as 2pm but mostly around 4pm. Most end around 6pm or 7pm. Kaldi was our favorite. $10 glasses of wine. 3 small rooms in a cave like setting. Friendly service.
Bastard Brew and Food - got a burger and fries for around $30. Good energy.
Drunk Rabbit -Irish Pub. Crowded. Wine was just okay but beer was good. Went back a couple of nights later and they had live music starting at 10pm. Lots of fun.
Ended night at Lemmy, a punk rock bar. Missed happy hour but regular prices similar to happy hour prices at other bars. Good vibe. They also have live music later in the evening
Day 2 - Golden Circle
Full-Day Tour with Kerid Crater (booked through Get your Guide). Note: Bus Travel Iceland was the tour operator. Picked up at bus stop 12 on time (early actually) at 9am and were back by 5:20pm. Our guide was very knowledgeable and interesting with lots of commentary, history, etc. Went on a Saturday and were told that on Saturday / Sunday avoids rush hour traffic delays getting out of Reykjavik. Plenty of bathroom breaks at nice large establishments that offered food and gifts.
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Snowy roads with on and off snow and wind throughout the day. So glad we were not driving ourselves.​​
Stop 1 - Kerid Crater. Quick stop. Probably more impressive in the sunny summer, but still nice.​​
Stop 2 - Geysir. Short walk to get to viewing point. Erupts every few minutes. Start your video, because it pops in a split second, so you’ll never catch a still.
Stop 3 - Gullfoss Waterfall. Truly spectacular. Pictures don’t show the true vastness and multiple falls leading into the one large fall. Favorite waterfall in Iceland. Ensure you check out all view points.
Stop 4 - Thingvellir National Park. Walk between the tectonic plates (Asia side and Americas side). View the former government council meeting area.
​Dinner at Reykjavík Kitchen and Bar. Close to our tour drop off, so went direct. Very good. Friendly service. Flavorful dishes and decent portions. Small establishment. Need a reservation.
Day 3 - Sky Lagoon
Flea Market - Kolaportio. Only open on the weekends. Found some decent priced Icelandic jewelry.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Booked 3pm so if there was a sunset that night, we could experience it. Booked Sky package - included transportation (only option available for the time slot we wanted - so book early if you don’t want to pay for a private changing area). Transportation going to Sky Lagoon leaves central bus station on the hour and leaves Sky Lagoon on the half hour.
Lagoon is warm, large, and magical with the steam coming off. It is surrounded on one side by lava rocks and the other side a bay. Swim up bar. Don’t miss the waterfall that you can go under on the opposite side of the lagoon from the swim up bar.
7 rituals were a great add on. Can only go through once. Cold plunge looked like a hot tub, but opposite. Next was sauna - nice huge picture window view. Can be packed, but large enough for everyone. Can sit in it as long as you want. Next cold misters followed by a body scrub (mixture of salt, almond and sesame oil). Steam room (last stop) is small so may have a line to get in but stay as long as you want. Exit back through into the lagoon to the swim up bar for a glass of bubbly. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Rok for dinner. Near the church. Tapa style (small plates). Very good. We were full with 4 dishes and 1 dessert. Good ambiance and service. Has an outdoor sitting area.
Northern lights. Our tour was canceled every night due to weather. Larry couldn’t sleep one night and looked at the Aurora app to find there was a small chance he would see something. So headed out and went a couple of blocks from our hotel to the harbor to get away from city lights. (Hear the old harbor near the Whale museum is a good place to go). Lights showed up for 20-30 minutes. NOTE: Looks better in the photo than the naked eye.
Day 4 - South Coast
South Coast full day tour by minibus from Reykjavik (Arctic Adventures booked through Viator). Picked up at 8am back a little before 7pm. Our Guide (Vjeran) had a lot of personality and you could tell he loved what he did. We enjoyed very much being part of his “Team Wonderful” for the day. We chose a small tour (14 people) as our understanding is the vans have studded tires and the big buses do not. Have to go over a couple of mountain passes so safer and more reliable with the smaller vehicle. NOTE: Our day was incredibly windy on the way back and we did see a large tour company bus that had gone off the road as well as several rental cars.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Stop 1 - Skogafoss waterfall - One of the tallest waterfalls in Iceland. Majestic with the snow and icy waters​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Stop 2 - Quick stop in Vik. To take a picture of the basalt stacks at the village. Picturesque church at the stop as well.
Stop 3 - Reynisfjara Beach - Black beach with angry crashing waves. Don’t get too close. Nice view of the basalt columns. This was also our lunch stop so had more than enough time to walk on the beach.
Stop 4 - Solhemajokull Glacier - highlight of our day. Highly recommend you go past the viewpoint and directly up to the base of the glacier to get a close-up view. This was the one time we used our crampons for additional stability.
Stop 5 - Seljalandsfoss Waterfall - during the summer you can walk behind it but during the winter that path is closed off for safety reasons.
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Dinner at Messinn. If you like and/or want fish for dinner this is the place to go. I’m not sure they had anything else on the menu except for fish. They serve the fish in a pan that has everything in it (e.g., the sides). Portions were large. Picture below was taken after I had already dished up some of the food from the pan.​​​​​
Day 5 - Back home
Late breakfast. Walked around town a little bit, some last-minute shopping, and then headed to the airport on the Flexbus. Look forward to coming back for a totally different experience of Iceland in the summertime, and think the winter is magical.