In March of 2023 James and I were able to tick off a destination on many people’s Bucket Lists – the amazing Iceland. If you’ve not been and are thinking of going, then go. Take your credit card though. Read on….
Like all international arrivals, we landed at Keflavik Airport, and we had a car booked to take us to our hotel. The city is a 45-minute to an hour drive away. If you don’t want to have a car driver, you can hire a car and drive yourself (more on that later) or there is a bus that goes from the airport to the bus station in the city, then you can connect onto a bus that takes you closer to your hotel.
If you have a late arrival, there are a couple of hotels near the airport that are functional and you can stay the night – more on that later.
REYKJAVIK
Iceland’s capital city is compact and is home to most of the country’s 300000 or so inhabitants. EVERYBODY speaks English. I asked a waitress while having dinner one night to teach me a few words. She smiled at me and said “nobody learns Icelandic. It’s easier for us to learn English”
It’s also very clean. Littering just doesn’t happen. Crime? What crime?
If you drive into Reykjavik, check with your hotel if they offer parking; most of it is street parking and you have to pay. The Hilton Reykjavik Nordica does have parking outside the hotel.
We had booked three nights at the wonderful Hotel Borg in a Deluxe Room and on the left you can see our view taken one evening. We were spoilt!
Because I knew that for the first three days we would be touring the city, we didn’t hire a car immediately and this saved the hassle of finding a parking space. That may or may not work for you.
Breakfast was at the hotel (it just makes things easier that way), however there are plenty of places in the city that you can eat at if you prefer. It’s a buffet, which I love, and you can eat as much as you like. The coffee is STRONG!
Was it cold? Damn yes. We went in March -take your thermals and a hat. Is it expensive? By UK standards yes. One lunch of a burger and fries for James and soup for me, with a bottle of wine was £80! Before you ask, it was in a cheap restaurant
Getting around
The city has a very good public transport system. Note that there are no trains on the island, only buses. We did buy one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tickets but after going one loop around the city, we didn’t use it anymore so unless you’re not great on your feet, save your money.
Eating and drinking
As I mentioned earlier, Iceland is expensive. As our cab driver said, “In Iceland, hot water and heating is cheap, and everything else is expensive”. The city has lots of places for food and drink of every taste and style. Our hotel restaurant wasn’t open for the first two days of our stay, so we ate there on our last night. I’d absolutely recommend trying The Sweet Pig. It has a great playlist and some awesome cocktails. Duck and Rose was just over the road from our hotel. Be prepared to see some items on a menu that are….different. For example, puffin, horse and whale. Tipping isn’t really a thing in Iceland
What to see?
Iceland’s history dates back to the Vikings and earlier, and there are several museums that feature this, such as Viking World. You can just walk around and breathe (the air is pretty clear). You can’t miss the Hallgrimskirkja Church and there is the famous Icelandic Phallological Museum. Perlan documents the geological history of the island and there is a lovely light show about the Northern Lights. Or you can just walk the streets. A great day would be:
- Walk past the Edition Hotel to the Harpa Concert Hall
- Pass the Sun Voyager
- Visit the Settlement Exhibition
- Head to the the Sculpture Museum
- Check out the Parliament House
Can I do just Reykjavik?
Of course! We wanted a dual-centre holiday so read on if you’re thinking of another location. Here’s a picture of me sitting on a chair made of ice. As you do!
We took a visit to Perlan. It’s near Reykjavik’s domestic airport and it was fascinating. The museum takes you through the geological history of Iceland form the time it was formed as the tectonic plates split and volcanoes threw ash and rock into the air. It also explains how ice formed the rock shapes we now see and cut into the various fjords around the island.
HUSAFEL
Husa what? Never heard of it? You’re about to learn.
It started as a desire to see the Northern Lights. You can arrange a tour from the city out to see them, and you (normally) need a clear dark sky, little or no wind, and some luck as it depends on how busy the Sun is being – somedays it sends out lots of particles of, well, stuff (there is a term for it), and some days it doesn’t. The more “stuff”, the more chances you are of seeing something. So, I was looking online at Viator and you pay to get on a bus at midnight, drive for a couple of hours, stand in a field, freeze your bits off, and look up.
Nah. Not doing that.
So, we sat down and did some research, and found this amazing hotel called Hotel Husafel
The hotel itself is about a two hour drive north of Reykjavik. If you’re unsure about driving, they can pick you up, and the drive there has some amazing scenery.
While talking about Husafel, I’m adding this in, as everybody I told about our Iceland trip asked (and still asks) “Did you go to the Blue Lagoon?” No. And I’ll tell you why.
The famous lagoon is sort of on the way between Keflavik airport and Reykjavik, so many people put that at the beginning and/or end of their stay on the island. Don’t be fooled by those lovely serene posts you see on someone’s social media feed. It’s busy and it’s over-priced, so unless you can go very early or very late, don’t bother.
Krauma
As we had ruled out the Blue Lagoon, we thought that there must be more than one of these places on an island that is formed from rock and ice, and there are LOTS. I’m a bit of a planner (who knew!) so I asked everybody’s friend, Mrs Google, if she could find me something. Then I did a bit of cross-referencing in my guide books that I got.
Krauma is about an hour and a half from Reykjavik by car and is signposted. It has five pools of varying temperature all the way from totally freezing (nope not doing that one!) to lovely and warm (spent lots of time in that one!) and it wasn’t too busy. IMPORTANT – if you are going to use a thermal pool, the Icelanders expect you to remove all of your clothes and wash thoroughly, before you put your swimming costume back on and get in. Krauma provides some lovely smelling shower gel for you to use and you can spend anything up to two hours there. There is also a restaurant on site where we had lunch before carrying on.
Back to Husafel. Having had some lovely food, onwards we went and it was probably about an hour along the road until we got to the hotel. Check in was pretty standard – passports, card details, here’s your room key. Yada yada.
I booked us into the only suite they had. Before you roll your eyes, my reason for this was space. I wanted somewhere for us to chill if the weather was rubbish, and somewhere that felt cosy if it was cold (which it was). When you arrive, you have the option of asking to be woken if the Northern Lights appear. We said yes.
The hotel is NOT a resort type of hotel. Very few hotels in Iceland are like this. It’s a functional base with a bit of luxury aimed at walkers, adventures and tourists. A lot of groups book this hotel and dinner times are busy, so I recommend booking dinner at the restaurant on site. There is a burger bar there too, but it’s not up to much. There are very few places nearby to get food. This isn’t meant as a criticism, it just is what it is.
There isn’t a bar on site, per se. There are dining tables and you can have pre-dinner drinks but if you want a drink afterwards, you’re going back to your room and either ordering room service or you can ask for a bottle of something to take back to your room with you.
Remember this hotel is not designed as a resort style – it’s functional, and most guests are up early for breakfast and are out by 9am to get the most out of their day.
Which brings me to the food. I’ve already mentioned it’s expensive. Expect to pay a pretty penny for dinner each night. As you would expect, there are lots of seafood and fish offerings, and several options if you are vegan or vegetarian. You can also expect to see horse, puffin and whalemeat on your menu. There’s lamb too. The Icelanders have to import most of their food as it’s almost impossible to grow crops in the land as it’s so rocky, which is another reason why it’s so expensive. Oh – did we see the Northern Lights during our trip? Yes, we did. They weren’t strong but there are so many factors that affect this:
As I mentioned, the hotel is designed around people that want to explore the area, and we did. Hraunfossar Falls are nearby, as is Cave Vidgelmir where we got to step back in time to see amazing rock formations.
A lovely little add-on that hotel provides is to visit their own private Canyon Baths. A guide takes you on a fairly gentle hike to a nearby canyon and talks about the flora and fauna in the area, and what the hotel is doing to maintain the area. The pools are carved into the surrounding rock and while you chill, you get served a couple of cans of beer. Our companions were locals who politely switched to talking in English so we got to join in the conversation.
We also got to travel into a the Langjokull Glacier. Remember that volcano eruption in 2010 when all those flights got grounded around the world? That black like you see in the ice is from that very same time – it’s all the compacted ash
One if the things I got asked if “can’t you just wing it?” and the answer is…probably not. For many of you, planning out a holiday in detail might be the worst thing ever, but remember Iceland is a bucket-list destination and the tours get busy. Our trips to the lava cave and the glacier were fully booked so I strongly advise that if you are planning on seeing more than just the capital, do the research, talk to the hotel, and hire a car. If you aren’t leaving the city, then you probably can decide on the day what you want to do
There is so much more to see. Thingvillir National Park, Silfra, Gulfoss and Diamond Beach and so much else. That’s on our next trip!