From mid July to mid August, we went on a long trip to Iceland, London, Bristol, Wales and the Cotswalds. It’s the longest I’ve ever been out of America. I loved it.
We traveled on IcelandAir and did a “Stopover” where you take a long layover and stretch it out over multiple days before going to your final destination. We’d never been to Iceland and it was really exciting for me after reading lots of the mythology and reading Hopeland, which has a sub-plot all about re-foresting Iceland along with lots of Icelandic geography.
Things to know about Iceland:
Iceland is expensive
Everything is surprisingly expensive. You are going to be shocked when you get a coffee and they make you take out a mortgage. Renting a car is expensive. Gas is expensive. Hotels are expensive. Food is expensive. I do not understand how anyone lives there full time. Tourism drives much of the economy, so maybe there’s some sort of locals only deal but I couldn’t see it anywhere. We accidentally bought a 50 euro stuffed sheep. Everywhere wants to sell you wool, sweaters, jackets and ice cream.
At a certain point, you just have to let go and realize it’s gonna be a wallet emptying trip.
You can skip the Perlan Museum
It’s an ok science museum! If you don’t skip Reykjavik, it’s a good thing to do while you are there and has commanding views of the city from the dome.
There is a cool ice cave experience! But if you’ve ever traveled into or onto an actual glacier it is underwhelming to go hang out inside of an icy freezer. The kids did not get into the spirit of it and mostly just huddled together in a wheelchair they commandeered and that I couldn’t get them out of.
You can spend a lot of time learning about Water Tigers, but we mainly learned we’d like to ride one if it’s huge.
One very interesting fact that stuck with me is that early settlers of Iceland harvested 80% of the trees, changing the climate. They are still trying to recover from this, which tied back into what I’d learned from the plot of Hopeland.
In general, we’ve visited tons of science museums and this was one of them. The dome and the ice cave are the most interesting to me. I also noticed a disco ball in the dome, so I’m assuming there are some sort of kick-ass dance parties there, but I didn’t get to go to one.
You can skip Reykjavik
The areas next to the Thingvellir parliament are very nice and include the The Black Cone, Monument to Disobedience, which is a star. Parking is a NIGHTMARE. I did not enjoy having a car or driving there, which must be a complete shock to read. But hey, it’s a very nice little city. It’s very nice and very little and it just didn’t have much that we needed to spend time on. Cities are nice when you can sample the food and shop and drink and try things . However, every single thing in the city is wildly expensive. Yes, I live in NYC and I am telling you I was noticing prices here. If you’ve been to lots of cities you can spend a day here and call it a win. Or just go into the center of Iceland. My original itinerary was going to be 3 days in the city and I’m glad we changed!
They eat horses
As we drove through the beautiful landscape we saw lots of horses. This seemed surprising for such a small land and we thought maybe they were just really cool and loved horses. They do! One of the ways they like horses is that they like to eat them, which we discovered when we stopped for lunch and went to a gas station cafe. It’s right there on the menu.
The food is either great or awful
I am not trying to bag on Iceland too hard. I had a very nice time. But the food was HILARIOUSLY bad at times. Lots of fried stuff, lots of cheap yucky bad for you stuff. The pizza was a standout! As in, we ate pizza that seemed like it had been described to a chef over a phone. Special shout-out to the Langbest near the airport for the least understanding of pizza and a redefinition of a classic chicken salad.
On the other hand, the lamb soup in general was really good. The cured fish was great! I really liked the fermented shark – it reminded me of a good stinky cheese. The seafood in general was good and I don’t know why so much of what was in restaurants was not the good stuff.
I got to try hardefiske which is dried fish jerky and it was pretty good to gnaw on while I was getting through zoom calls.
The landscape is the star and it is wildly varied
The landscape is wildly varied from bleak moss to moss on very big rocks and cliffs to geysirs to one small pretty nice city to rocks that support some sheep and/or horses. (I did not make it to cool glaciers or puffin beaches.
Landing in Keflavik (where NYC flights land) is incredibly underwhelming. We stayed in an airport hotel that was sad and small and charged us for 2 rooms when we could easily fit in 1. The Konvin hotel is not good.The landscape was one of the bleakest things I’ve ever seen. In general the architecture was concrete. Everywhere looked like a good place to be murdered and that might be the most exciting thing to happen. I immediately thought I’d really screwed up by booking so much time in Iceland and that this was going to be a really hard week.
Driving from Keflavik to Reykjavik was transformative. The sun came out, the clouds cleared up and we drove into a beautiful little city of flowers by a sparkling sea. We spent a beautiful day in Reykjavik (which you can skip) and spent time at the Perlan Museum (you can skip it) and the family went to the Penis Museum while I took a work call (I will always regret this).
The deeper in the better
We drove further into the middle of the country and stayed at a very fancy hotel in the middle of nowhere. It is entirely geothermal powered and heated. We climbed up into the hills and had a fantastic time exploring. I tried to climb some volcanic rock with Max but it broke off and cut up my hands so I couldn’t go up high with him. Instead we clambered around and down through giant pillows of moss. It was like walking on the moon! You could see the geothermal plant, which they do not include in the promotional photos. It’s over there.
It was very luxurious. I loved the food, the hot tub outside, and the deep view from the hot tub outside. I stayed up late because why not and had a beverage in the northern lights viewing lounge. Mainly I viewed the lack of night time until I was too tired and went to bed. This photo is from a little after midnight.
To get there we drove through stunning ridges and wild mountain ranges. I have no pictures because my family slept through all of it as I exclaimed “Oh wow this is amazing wake up please take a picture”.
You are not supposed to touch Iceland
We did not realize this originally. We thought it was a landscape to get into and climb and explore. However, you are not supposed to touch it. Those photos earlier where we are joyously playing around in the landscape, climbing around and laughing?
Those were a very bad thing we did that we did not realize would be a problem. Here is a ridiculously cute video from the Icelandic government on the subject.
So many places you visit in the Golden Circle are behind ropes. They look amazing, but there are signs all over saying “do not walk here”. I don’t understand why the sheep and the horses don’t cause an issue but I do. Still – if I’m in your house I’m going to do my best to honor your rules, so we didn’t enjoy any more moss walks.
Thingvellir is gorgeous
This is the site of the first parliament. It’s where you can see the landscape splitting apart from the stress of the plates. There are waterfalls galore. Most of it is roped off and there are special paths, but there are some spots that are rocks you are allowed to play on. Max was really disappointed that you aren’t allowed to touch most of it, but we talked about how this is a site that gets SO many people that it would fail under the traffic. They’ve also nicely incorporated a lot of plaques that show what happened where – legislating and murdering.
Geysirs, Craters and Waterfalls
The blast craters are pretty sweet. For this one, we hiked it and played with the rocks and walked around it.
The Geysir is really impressive, but we didn’t get a picture of it erupting. This is what it looks like until it goes foom. All around, hot water is bubbling out of the earth and you are behind ropes with many other tourists cooking together in the smell of old eggs. Still, it feels magical when the eruption happens. Imagine being the first person to walk into this landscape, following a stream and finding a fountain! That right there, that’s the origin of the term geyser.
There are lots of waterfalls in Iceland – I think the Gullfoss is well worth the visit. I love being near that much raw kinetic energy in action.
The fauna are not playing around with you
The sheep and horses mostly just roam wild and are fine. However, I need to make two shoutouts to the bugs and the birds.
The bugs are not playing around with you
We went when it was very nice out in Iceland. It’s gorgeous weather. This is also apparently prime living and mating time for their bug population. The biting flies were so numerous it was just silly. I took a picture of our license plate.
We saw people walking around with nets on their faces. Once we cooked some food at home and we opened a window when the smoke alarm went off. This was a tragic mistake as all of the flies then ate us. We are no longer alive, we are mostly in the bellies of now dead flies, presumably on some license plate.
The birds are not playing around with you
As I returned our car, I walked by some bleak landscape that was incredibly important to local birds and they were super angry with me. They shouted at me and dive bombed me but never actually hit me.
This video is a minute long, but I only started filming after I finally noticed I was being attacked, that the birds were specifically ticked off at ME.
I do not speak Icelandic bird and I was unable to communicate that I didn’t want their eggs so I just kept pushing on until they were satisfied they had defeated me.
They probably still squawk about their triumph.
Iceland knows how to soak
The highlights of our trip were either hiking in a crazy environment or sitting in warm water. All over, there are hot tubs and public baths. Like Japan’s Onsens, the Icelandic hot baths are great. We went to a few and my favorites were the Secret Lagoon and the Blue Lagoon.
The Blue Lagoon is very good
The Blue Lagoon is super famous and very expensive, but it lives up to the reputation. It’s probably the best use of a waste product in existence! The whole lagoon is the output of a nearby Geothermal power plant. The water can’t be recycled through the power plant due to the extremely high silica content so they turned into this idyllic spa in the middle of volcanic rubble.
The high silica content of the water causes the beautiful white and blue colors. They encourage you to smear it on your face as a mask!
When we drove up, the road takes you close to the town of Grindavik, which is evacuated due to… Volcano going boom. And the road has, I kid you not, steaming lava nearby. It doesn’t seem like it can be true, but we saw the road just going through it. It cracked me up to drive to a spa through a literal hellscape. Imagine this, but a road. And more smoking.
Closing thoughts
This is clearly more post than I should have written, but it was a real adventure and I know I’ll forget the stories if I don’t write. They’ll all leak out of my ears and I’ll be surprised when someone asks me what Iceland was like! It seems like we could go back in 4 or so years when the kids can handle bigger hikes and we could get some time to enjoy the nightlife. All in all I’m glad we went, but if we return we will go farther in and head out from the city faster.
The landscape is the real show in Iceland, so it’s better to get out as far as you can to go see it.
