Category: UK/Iceland, Summer 2023

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!

On our last day in Iceland we drove from the Snaefellsnes Peninsula to the famous Blue Lagoon facility.  We stopped in Bogarnes for lunch at a spot called Kaffi Kyrrd, which had an excellent view from their patio.  Have we mentioned how much they are into their elves in Iceland??

We then drove to the Silica Hotel, an excellent accomodation that sits in the middle of a lava field, directly adjacent to what must be THE most popular spot in Iceland, the Blue Lagoon.

The Silica Hotel is the nicest place we stayed in Iceland, and has the benefit of being only 25 minutes from the airport, versus Reykjavik, which is 45 minutes or more.  It’s also very quiet, unlike Reykjavik.  The view from the rooms is lava for as far as you can see.

There is moss covering the lava.  There are signs everywhere asking people to stay off the lava, as the moss will die if walked on, much like the ground in frozen tundra areas.

The Silica Hotel has their own thermal baths, which are exclusively for use by hotel guests, so they are much more private and intimate than the Blue Lagoon.  When we used them there were maybe 6 other people in the water.

This is a far cry from the Blue Lagoon, which is just swamped with people.

This was our view from dinner that night.  Lots of people here….not our thing!

Towards dusk this woman decided to show off her assets.  This must be a common occurrence in this “Instagrammer’s Paradise”.

These pools are in abundance between the Silica Hotel and the Blue Lagoon facility.  At least nobody was walking into them…at least not while we were there.

Our flight from Iceland to Chicago was flawless, taking off on time and arriving early.  We flew over Greenland on the way, and the weather was quite cooperative!

Look at those glaciers with lots of icebergs in the bay!  This just makes me want to visit Greenland!

Gorgeous detail on this glacier!  I was shocked with how good these photos were from the plane!

One more shot of an incredible glacier in Greenland!  Wow is this place gorgeous!  Definitely on our bucket list now!

One final note.  Do NOT fly through Chicago O’Hare airport even if it costs you a little more money or time.  It was an absolute cluster-fuck of mismanagement!  On arrival we had to get off the plane, go through a slow as molasses Customs line, pick up our luggage at the incredibly crowded and terribly run luggage area (they switched carousels on us 3 times!), go through a super crowded Customs gate again, take our luggage on a train 3 stops to recheck the luggage with United, go back through security (speaking of running slower than molasses), then run about a half mile to our gate.  We had a two hour layover and barely made it onboard before departure!  Screw that place!

We have one final post regarding Iceland and the rest of the trip, which I will try to crank out in the next day or so.  As always, thanks for reading!