Iceland: the landscape.

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It’s ALL about nature in Iceland. You’re in it, it’s huge, it’s dangerous, and it’s everywhere you look.

The only real way to get about is to drive. We chose the smallest car in Iceland, a Nissan Micra. Some people here are driving things that make monster trucks look like Tonka toys. Tomorrow we’re going on a ‘super jeep’ expedition so I’m hoping that we get to go in something you need a ladder to get into and wheels taller than me.

Luke couldn’t believe how fast this is compared to Van Failen. I hope this gives some insight into exactly how slow Van Failen is.

In the last few days we’ve driven through such a variety of scenery it’s hard to put it all into words. One moment you’ll find yourself driving along highway that is edged by a cliff so high the top is lost in cloud, the next you’ll be driving across a plain of black volcanic sand. One of my favourites is the one we’ve dubbed ‘moon cheese’ – where huge lumpy rocks are all coated in a yellowy soft moss that looks like melted cheese. Then there’ll be steam shooting out of vents in the ground and around the next bend there’s a 100m waterfall pouring off a cliff.

One of my favourite photos so far.

Houses here are small dots on the landscape, with little around them – maybe a line of tiny trees – and not much else but a few tractors and bales of horse feed. We’ve seen almost no gardens outside the capital and all the trees look less than a few years old, giving the countryside a very spartan look. The houses are really plain too. There’s no gingerbread cottages here as there were in Slovakia. The outside of homes are sometimes brightly coloured but everything seems very functional.

But back to the landscape.

Just up the hill behind the hotel we stayed in the first night.

We spent most of our second full day driving the Golden Circle, which I had originally mistaken for the ring road that goes all the way around Iceland. Fortunately it’s much smaller than that and it’s a circuit that covers most of the major scenic attractions, not far from Reykjavik.

First stop for us was a volcanic crater with a lake inside it. We stopped for a few photos, read the information boards and moved on.

My awkward and uncomfortable expression was not because of a premonition that this was going to be a bad photo of me, but because I was being tormented by a million flies.

Next was Thingvellir. The most important landmark in Iceland as for many centuries it was the meeting point for all Icelandic people and the site of their government, the Althing. It is also a place where the meeting of the North American and European continental plates is at its most obvious and there’s a big rift in the valley. I neglected to take any photos here – distant, wide plains are quite difficult subjects for photography as there’s nothing to really focus on, you just end up with lots of sky. Nevertheless, as the site of the world’s longest-held democratic process it’s an interesting place to stand.

Third stop was Geysir and I’m sure you can guess what’s there. The place stank horrendously but the sight of the bubbling pools of water and the jet going off every 5 minutes was impressive. I was still sick and it was starting to rain so I let Luke hang around to get it on video 3 times. I spent the few minutes in the gift shop goggling at the price of everything then we moved on to Gulfoss.

Gulfoss is not the largest waterfall in Iceland but it’s definitely the best known and it certainly is impressive. Only slightly less wonderous in driving rain (hooray for waterproof trousers!) the noise and power of it are intense. Luke, I have discovered, absolutely loves waterfalls and so I got a few photos of him in front of it on his phone but I didn’t take my camera out because it was so wet.

The sky cleared as we headed towards the south coast and our next hotel, which was quite a bit further away than first calculated and since the sun was still well up in the sky we hadn’t really been paying attention to the fact that it was getting towards 6pm and we may have about 3 hours of driving left.

Fortunately we arrived around 9:30, while the sun was still above the horizon and the reception  was still open. It was Friday night, the Summer solstice, and I was determined to stay up as late as I could. We unpacked then got back in the car and drove a little way back down the road to where we’d passed a waterfall. Taking the camera gear and some glasses and drinks, we followed a trail beside the stream and ended up on the pebbly beach in the half-dark. I took some long exposure shots and we toasted our travels. Another couple arrived just as we were leaving but it had been nice to have the place to ourselves for half an hour. While you may be picturing a very peaceful romantic scene in your head let me remind you that waterfalls are thunderingly loud – we did a small piece-to-camera after we left and it was still roaring in the background.

As loud as it was beautiful.

I think, after all that, I managed to stay awake til about 1am, which is when the sky was at its darkest – dark enough for headlights but not dark enough to need a torch or anything.

I still haven’t really seen the midnight sun as it’s been cloudy every night, but experiencing daylight that late has been interesting. Luke’s found it harder to sleep than I have, but at the same time I do feel more like staying awake later. My natural inclination as I get older is to go to sleep at about 9pm, so happily staying awake til 11 or 12 must be the result of all that light. I think, were I here in Winter, I’d sleep 18 hours a day!

 

Reykjavik

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We spent our first full day on Iceland looking around Reykjavik. For reasons known only to themselves, the company we booked our self-drive trip through booked us into accommodation 40 minutes out of town so it was a bit of a drive back. I was still sick so, while I was glad that it was a bright, sunny day, I was also not feeling my best and my eyes were watering the whole time from the blinding brightness of the near-arctic sun.

First stop, after immediately finding a park right where we wanted for the first time since leaving Australia, was Harpa, the very new and shiny entertainment/conference venue in the middle of town. I’d seen pictures of it in the inflight magazine on the way over and thought to take a look.

Fortunately nothing in Reykjavik is outside of walking distance, so we found it in moments and went inside to take a look. It was like I’d imagine bees would do large scale architecture.

Reykjavik’ll make you… jump, jump!

Then we wandered around town and found a fantastic little skate park full of great graffiti. Later on in the day we walked past again and it was full of families of all ages plus young people in groups hanging out and being a bit rowdy. Everyone around town just seemed to want to be outside in the sun.

We walked over to Roadhouse Burgers, which I’d recommend if you’re not on a budget (heck, I wouldn’t recommend Iceland if you’re on a tight budget) because it was definitely the best meal we’ve eaten so far. Then it was up to Iceland’s most recognisable piece of architecture, their very modern Lutheran church.

The rocket-shaped church with a statue of Leif Erikson in front, a gift from the USA to the ‘original discoverer’ of America. Except for all those pesky native people, of whom Leif himself wrote upon his return to Iceland.

You’ll have to forgive me regarding the paucity of photos at the moment. The internet is slooooow anywhere outside the capital and we haven’t even been able to connect the last few days.

The church looks cool but the inside is as bare as the outside and, after all the gilt and marble of other European churches, it looks sort of unfinished. Maybe needs some paint rather than the bare concrete, I don’t know.

Next we walked down the hill to a bar that had been recommended by a friend of a friend – ‘Lebowski’s’ and of course all the decor was movie themed. It was a bit cheesy but we had a drink anyhow and gave our feet a rest.

The final thing on my to do list for the day was look at some Icelandic wool stuff, even just buy a couple of balls of wool and some needles to keep me occupied. Well. Wool here is nasty, nasty stuff. The locals seem to take great pride in it but I couldn’t feel much difference between the wool jumpers and one of those coir doormats. Blurgh.

We spent the last couple of hours before the show we’d plan to see in the evening, sitting in the foyer of Harpa on a couch is the sun reading our kindles.

The show Luke had found out about was a one hour, one person history of Iceland, performed in the back room of a pub. And we were the only audience, which wasn’t as weird as you’d think, especially after we had a chat with the girl performing it. The show was pretty good, too, although there were a few slow bits. Thanks to my reading a history of Iceland before we came I already knew a fair bit of it but being able to ask questions afterwards was helpful.

I was most interested in hearing about the traditional turf houses and the way in which people lived before modern times. I was told that the last people to move out of turf houses (which mostly had no electricity or plumbing) did so around the 60’s and 70’s. Which meant that there might still be people alive today who transitioned from what was, essentially, a medieval lifestyle to one that involved cars, microwaves and the internet. This boggles my mind in so many ways and I’m not even sure why I find it so enthralling. I think it reminds me of that 80’s movie, Encino Man and how I always wished I could be there to see how someone from the past reacted to all the changes that have occurred over the last X centuries. Either that or I could travel into the future and boggle at what has become of the human race.

I guess travel is a bit like that. You see people living in the technological past and also in elements of the future. You see inventions that amaze you and conditions that appall you. It certainly makes every day interesting.

Budgeting, Iceland

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It’s hard to know where to begin when writing about Iceland. I think I’ll leave the scenery for my next post and write about what’s been uppermost in my mind and our conversations when we’ve not been staring, goggle-eyed, at what’s around us.

It’s the thing you can’t help but notice here and it’s something that comes up in most conversations and definitely at meal times – the cost of being here. Food is the most noticeable thing because you’re shelling out for it several times a day. We had the buffet at the restaurant over the road from our hotel two nights ago and it was $52 AUD each (it’s handy that Krona converts to AUD of you drop two zeros). That was $52 for a bowl of soup, a choice of 4 kinds of fish, 2 lamb dishes, salad and some potato bake. No dessert, no drinks. We did pilfer a few chocolates from beside the coffee and tea stand. Tonight’s hotel is $55 for a buffet also. We’ll be having jam sandwiches in our room.

On our first full day here we had lunch at ‘The Roadhouse’, an American style diner in Reykjavik. The food was fantastic but my pulled-pork burger and chips was $18. The most expensive burger on the menu was $35. We were both a bit shell shocked.

Luke’s burger had macaroni cheese in it along with all the regular stuff. Win!

Petrol here is about $2.50 AUD a litre. Fortunately we’re driving a Micra so it’s not as bad as it could be, but everything here except seeing the amazing natural wonders costs a bomb.

I thought it might be handy for people who are thinking of coming here to know what we’ve spent and a few ideas on cost cutting.

Firstly, we booked a self drive tour. Since we needed an automatic that put up the price by a couple of hundred dollars, but for all our hotels (pretty basic, half are shared bathrooms but all have private rooms) ad the car hire it was about $1400 each.

I’d say we’ve spent, on average, about $50 per day on food. We’ve had a few expensive meals, but we’ve also had breakfast included each day (and a sneaky person can make themselves up a take away sandwich), which can fill you up til mid afternoon if you go heavy on the cold meats and eggs. Then we share a plate of something or buy pre-made rolls for lunch (they’re about $7 each and some are nice and others are awful but there’s rarely much choice, particularly at the cafes that are at tourist attractions – go for petrol stations if you can) and last night we ate corn chips and salsa dip for dinner with a movie in our room. Except for mixers with our spirits we’ve been mostly drinking water from bottles we’re refilling at our hotels.

If you’re traveling to Iceland I’d highly recommend filling your suitcase with long lasting food (like fruit and nuts, tinned tuna, etc) so that you’ve got snacks until you find somewhere you want to eat. Not having snacks the first few days meant that we were pretty desperate by the time we found somewhere and felt that we had to pay whatever they asked. If you can spin out your bought meals with some groceries you’ll save heaps. For example, today I got a fishburger and chips and Luke made chip sandwiches using bread from the supermarket. That burger, btw, was $14.

I think my main recommendation, if you like a few drinks, would be to use your duty free allowance before you leave wherever it is you’re traveling to Iceland from. Use it good. Iceland Air don’t seem to care about you having a bag of duty-free as extra carry-on and you could probably get away with bringing in several bottles if you so chose. We bought two one litre bottles and were enormously glad we did when it turned out that one small bottle of cider was $10 – same for beer or a small glass of wine. And the wine was awful.

Alcohol is also quite hard to get. There’s only 12 government-owned stores in the capital and I’ve not seen any anywhere else. Our hotel today sells small bottles of beer, wine and cider from a fridge by the reception desk but that is the only time I’ve seen it for sale outside a restaurant in the last 4 days. I wanted to have a drink somewhere scenic on midsummer’s night and was very, very glad I’d prepared everything much earlier.

As to buying stuff other than food, booze and accommodation, forget about it. I had a vague idea about buying a nice wooly jumper or hat or something as a momento but the choice is between the ubiquitous so-scratchy-I-think-the-sheep-grow-steel-wool jumpers and lovely angora clothing, both of which are INSANELY expensive. I found a nice sweater dress, simple and black – $328. The average wooly hat is around $60 but with fur you’re looking at around $400. That’s right FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS. Just buy a postcard and be done.

I’d say our trip has probably cost us around $2500 each for the 9 days. You could possibly do cheaper accommodation by camping every second night (but you’d want to pray for good weather) as camping seems to be free here (don’t quote me on that) and buying all your food from supermarkets but even if you do it fairly budget like we have it’s never going to be a cheap place to visit.

After all this whinging though, it’s still been TOTALLY worth it.

Iceland! (Luke)

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Figured I may as well give my first impressions of Iceland as well. Amanda’s may have been the toilets at the airport, but mine was the plane! We flew Iceland Air. They had comfortable seats and a good amount of leg room, plus a decent selection of entertainment. I watched Fantastic Mr. Fox (passable) and The Campaign (which, while being an average movie on the whole, had one scene which was so funny that I was crying with laughter, and rewound it just to show Amanda). The seat also had a USB port, presumably for charging devices. The in-flight magazine also said they were getting the planes equipped with wireless internet this year. Soft drink, coffee and tea were complimentary, anything alcoholic you had to pay for. Which is perfectly fine on a flight of less than three hours. So; Iceland Air – two thumbs up!

I do have to mention the airport toilets as well though. Everything was so white and minimalistic, I felt like I was in a Stanley Kubrick film. Clean and streamlined, though, I’ll give them that. The other thing I found strange was that there was no separate arrivals and departures area, so on the way to baggage claim I was walking past gates that had people boarding as well as arriving.

We picked up our rental car and hit the road, traveling to our destination of Hveragerdi, which is an hour from the airport and about 40 minutes from Reykjavik.

Driving here is a bit of a mixed bag. I don’t really enjoy driving all that much, but when I do enjoy it I’m usually on a highway, going fast, not needing to change directions or make navigational decisions, and either happily overtaking people or going a little under the limit and watching everyone else jostle for position. The limit on most UK motorways is 70mph, or 112km/h. Van Failen isn’t the best at high speeds – when he slowly but surely reaches 70mph the steering wheel vibrates so violently that it’s indecent – but he does the job and gets us there, so far without issue.

Here they’ve given us a brilliantly sporty little Nissan Micra which wants to blast off the line at the slightest touch of the pedal – pretty much the opposite of what I’m used to with Van Failen. Not only that but in Iceland they have huge stretches of open road that are fairly empty. They’re begging to be driven on at speed. But the speed limit here is 90km/h on sealed roads. When the weather is good, this feels woefully slow, especially after the UK. However their driving conditions can change drastically, and after driving a short stretch in the pelting rain, I was happy for an excuse to do no more than 80km/h. I imagine in the winter time it can get even worse.

Driving on the wrong side of the road for the first time definitely made me nervous, but nowhere near the level that narrow and single-lane roads have done in the UK. I have at least played computer games where I have needed to drive in a lawful manner on the other side of the road, so my brain has been put to the task of reversing everything before. Additionally, I’m a very new driver (just shy of two years), so left-side driving isn’t as ingrained in me as it is with Amanda – this makes it easier for me to switch.

Anyhow we got to the hotel without incident, and after checking in I went for a wander to scope out the small town, grab a bite to eat and withdraw some cash. I’m always eager to see new currency, and the Iceland Krona (ISK) is fairly spiffy.

Iceland Krona

Icelandic Króna (ISK)

The coins all feature different aquatic animals. Currently, it’s 111 ISK to 1 AUD. I purchased a plain hot dog and a bottle of coke from one of the stores here and it set me back 590 ISK ($5.30 AUD). That’s not too bad, but generally speaking the prices of things here are fairly high. We’re going to have to keep an eye on our wallets! Luckily the main thing we want to do is sight seeing, and that’ll only cost us petrol… which costs on average 248.55 ISK ($2.23 AUD) per litre. Lucky it’s a small island!

Iceland!

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As much as any place on our tour this year, Iceland definitely ticks a bucket list box. Which is why I’m so bloody irritated that my nose is dripping like a tap, my eyes are weeping like a Victorian heroine and I can’t stop sneezing. Curse you, body! Still, it’s my first proper bout of illness this year and Iceland already looks pretty spectacular, even through a blizzard of tissues.

We landed at Keflavik (I considered starting this post with a rant about the otherwise-well-mannered middle-aged New York gentleman who would NOT keep his elbows inside his seat territory on the plane but that would’ve been a bit of a downer) and arrived without incident. Or should I say that a certain Yankee was lucky to arrive without me stabbing him in the fleshy upper-arm with my pen.

First impression of Iceland was wow.

These are seriously the best toilets I’ve ever seen in an airport. You know how you can spot a fancy toilet by the Dyson hand dryer? Well in Iceland the taps were Dyson and they had a dryer attached to the taps, like so:

I bet this is how Captain Kirk washes and dries his hands.

That’s right – the tap is in the middle and there’s one dryer for each hand. These people are living in whatever comes beyond the first world.

On top of this, the sink was in the cubicle with the toilet and the cubicle was HUGE. This is important because, as a female who has traveled internationally and also likes to use toilets (which is a freakish combination, to be sure), I have frequently been irritated by the fact that there is never enough room in the cubicle for my luggage. You can see the issue here when you’re on your own. Ask a stranger to mind it or just leave it outside and hope you haven’t initiated a bomb scare? Iceland, alone out of all the world’s nations, seems to have recognised and overcome this problem. If I knew who to thank I’d kiss them.

After I finished marvelling at the plumbing we picked up our rental car, handed back a list of real and imaginary scratches that we shouldn’t be held accountable for (always good to plan ahead) and hit the road. Which is to say, Luke drove extremely cautiously on the opposite side to which we are accustomed and I read the map, in between reusing old tissues I found in my pockets and, to all intents and purposes, crying uncontrollably on one side of my face.

Turned out the address we’d been given for our two nights in Reykjavik was, in fact, a half hour drive out of town (and can I just big myself up a little here for being able to spell Reykjavik on the second try without help) and we had no idea how to get there or what the address really meant. Which word was the town? Which word was the street? Why were there two numbers? Why couldn’t we pronounce anything on the map?

We solved this dilemma by stopping at a petrol station and the fellow there sold us $6 sandwiches and gave us a one page, much easier to follow, map and explained where to go. Which led us, through a series of unexpectedly correct choices, to our hotel in a tiny little town somewhere in Iceland. Right now we’re planning  what we’re going to do tomorrow – we’re on a self-drive holiday that allows two nights here so we can explore Reykjavik for a day then we’re off driving around the countryside for 6 days.

And all you’re getting today is a picture of a tap. It was a great tap though, I promise!