Cruise Reviews and things we learned about Iceland

One night while we were in Iceland, about 5 days after departing the cruise ship, I decided to write up a review of our suite, as well as the cruise itself, on Cruise Critic.

The suite review was pretty critical, as we really splurged for this cruise, and the experience was unworthy of the expense.  If you are interested, the thread for this review is here.

After several of the board members suggested I also post about the overall cruise experience on Oceania Riviera, I posted that here.

We have one more Oceania cruise coming up this fall, so I’m hoping the experience on the smaller Insignia ship will be more positive and in line with our past Oceania experiences.  We shall see!

On to a lighter topic, things we learned about Iceland!

1. 1. Once you leave the Reykjavik area, you run into a lot of one-way bridges crossing rivers, and I mean a LOT of them.  I think we crossed about 100 during our three week drive around Iceland.  A few of them were quite long, and several didn’t even give you a decent view to the other side, so you just had to go for it!  Fortunately we never ran into a situation where we had to back up.
   2. When you travel in the northern part of Iceland and venture off the Ring Road (also known as Route 1), be prepared to run into gravel or dirt roads.  Some of them seemed to start and then end for no reason, making us curious as to why they didn’t bother to just finish paving the road?  These roads were mostly well maintained, but some of them were pretty nasty.  You should have seen our car by the end of the trip!  I’m surprised the rental car company didn’t complain.
   3. A lot of tourists make Reykjavik their home base, and take tour buses to the various locations in the south of Iceland.  If you want to avoid the crowds, get to the popular sites early in the day (before 0930 or 1000) or later in the day when the buses head back (1600-1700).
   4. Reykjavik is very crowded and very loud.  There were people out partying at all hours of the night, regardless of what day of the week it was.  It’s worth a visit, but don’t just stay here as a home base…venture out…there are a LOT of nice hotels only a few hours drive from Reykjavik.
   5. You cannot buy Sudafed in Iceland.  I don’t know why, perhaps because of the meth issue, but it’s simply not available.  Bring your own!
   6. Electricity is cheap in Iceland.  Gas is super expensive!  I didn’t research this in advance, but there are plenty of places to charge an electric car, so I’d consider this if you are making a trip here and plan to rent a car.  On the flip side, do NOT rent a plug-in hybrid like we did.  The car didn’t come with a charging cable, and the gas tank was less than 10 gallons, so we had to refuel constantly.
   7. We had read that the northern part of Iceland has hardly any tourists.  This is bullcrap.  Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t overrun like the southern coast, but there are plenty of tourists everywhere.  Iceland has just become so popular that you aren’t going to avoid tourists unless you come in the winter.
   8. Iceland, despite it’s name, can get warm.  It even got into the mid 70’s a couple times.  We wore short-sleeved shirts nearly every day, and even wore shorts a few days.  Make sure you pack accordingly.
   9. The Icelandic folks are crazy about elves.  They have stories about them, locations named after them, books about them, and plenty of little elf statutes all over the place.  They even have little elf houses here and there.
   10.  People in Reykjavik rave about their hot dogs, claiming they are the “best in the world”.  Don’t believe the hype.  First of all, they don’t even have real mustard…it’s some weird brownish stuff that tastes nothing like mustard…I don’t think there’s really any mustard in it.  Also, they like to put crushed dried onions on their hot dogs.  It’s just weird, like something you’d expect from Portland, Oregon!

Iceland was definitely a huge bucket list item checked off.  Our favorite hotels were the Umi Hotel and the Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon, both on the south coast. Our favorite restaurants were Nord Astur in Seydisfjordur, Naustid in Husavik, and Bjargarsteinn Mathus, where we ate three times!  We were practically locals!  Our overall favorite though was in Reykjavik, the excellent Kopar, where the seafood was the best of the entire trip.  If you end up in Reykjavik, even for just one day, avoid the hot dogs and just eat here!

Our next trip is in October, when we head to Montreal and catch a cruise through the Saint Lawrence River, and check out the fall colors along the east coast of Canada and Maine.  As always, thanks for following us along on our journeys, and if you ever have a question about anything we’ve done don’t hesitate to ask!