We spent the last few days of our Iceland trip in Reykjavic itself. For both of us, some work had accumulated while we drove around the country and it could no longer wait. In addition to our work though, we managed to hit a few restaurants, hit the big flea market, and take a walking tour. Iceland seems to have had a less turbulent history than many other countries. It is odd seeing the parliament and the prime minister’s office without any visible security.
A few points for others intending to visit Iceland
Expensive
As many have noted, Iceland is expensive. Figure on 2-3 times what you’d expect to pay in Canada. As mentioned before, eating at restaurants is particularly pricey and spending $200 a day for a person is not actually difficult to achieve if you always eat out. Even taking care, you will exceed $100 a day by eating out. If you eat out, you will likely be eating a lot of lamb and fish. It is good though.
Food
As mentioned above, eating out is expensive. Lots of hotels have kitchenettes and you can certainly cook meals for yourself while camping. It helps keep prices down if you shop at the large grocery stores like Bonus, Kronan or Netto for your food instead of the smaller convenience stores in the tourist district. However, don’t expect N.A. levels of selection in Iceland. Iceland has a total population around 335,000 people – making it smaller than greater Victoria but more spread out. What food we did see was good quality but there was little variety. Liane wants me to add that Gluten Free was a challenge in Iceland.
Language
Don’t worry about it. Half the staff working in tourism are foreigners and I suspect they are hired based on language skills. Poland and Australia were particularly well represented. Even the local Icelanders all had English ranging from adequate to fluent.
Money
Everything here goes on the credit card. You get strange looks for using cash. We did find some gas stations would not take one of our credit cards but the other cards worked just fine.
Driving
The drivers here are quite good. The speeding fines are large so we didn’t find too many insane speeders like you see in N.A. Like much of Europe, traffic circles are prevalent and you have to learn how to drive them but that just takes practice. One issue here is distracted driving – I thought Victoria was bad for cell phone use while driving but Reykjavic is worse. The only saving grace is that the drivers do seem a bit more aware of the issue and manage to pull themselves away from their call when needed.
Northern Lights
These are mostly a winter thing so don’t expect to see great displays here during anything close to the tourist season. Face it, in summer it doesn’t even really get dark. If you are here though when it gets dark, check the forecast at http://en.vedur.is/weather/forecasts/aurora/ to find out the best nights for viewing.
We’ve now left Iceland and landed in Cairns, Queensland, Australia. So we went from volcanos and glaciers to palm trees and crocodiles. At this point, we are focussed on recovering from our jet lag.
A couple of final pictures from Iceland. First, me at the Kerid crater late in the trip.
and then Liane with the Unknown Bureaucrat outside Reykjavic city hall.
