Destination Realities: Iceland

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might have read some of my Destination Daydreams posts about the things I really want to do while I'm travelling. Now that the first destination, Iceland, is very much done and dusted, I thought I'd revisit my original ideas and see how it panned out.

1. I planned on 2 weeks

But the cheapest flights out of the country to Halifax, Nova Scotia were on Thursdays and Saturdays and I figured that with the costs in Iceland in general, 10 days should do. And it has.

2. I wanted to see the Golden Circle in summer

Achievement get. This was the first trip I took and it was as wonderful as I imagined. Save for my camera breaking, but we'll ignore that for now.

3. Jokulsarlon and Vatnajokull

I would have loved to see both of these places - Jokulsarlon is a lagoon full of icebergs, Vatnajokull is the glacier they calve from. Unfortunately, day trips there are more expensive than I'd have liked and to do it on public transport would have meant having to stay overnight in somewhere like Hofn where accommodation is extorionate.

4. The North East

I listed Husavik for whale watching, as well as Akureyri and Myvatn. Turns out I could go whale watching from Akureyri, which is easier and cheaper to get to and it was awesome. Myvatn and its famous hot pools was just too awkward to do on public transport and there was plenty to keep me occupied in Akureyri for the couple of days I was there.

5. Snaefellsnes

I'd added a visit to Snaefellsnes onto my original plans as a sort of afterthought. I'm so glad I took a trip there though, even if it did rain all day! It's a beautiful, wild place and so quiet.

Overall, I think I managed to accomplish most of my original goals for Iceland. Now, things to bear in mind for anyone thinking of planning a trip there.

1. If you can go self catering, do it

Eating out is prohibitively expensive, not just in Reykjavik but across the country. I treated myself to a few small meals and every time I winced at the cost. There's a supermarket called Bonus which is incredibly cheap by Icelandic standards - go there instead.

2. Don't just stick to Reykjavik

Iceland feels like a huge place once you get out of the capital. It's worth getting a bus, or a car if you can afford it, and exploring a bit. The public bus to Akureyri works out at about £50-60 one way and it's worth it for the views alone.

3. Visit some of the museums

Reykjavik is dotted with an assortment of museums, as is Akureyri. Just don't expect them to be free - 1500 krona seems to be fairly standard.

4. Get out and walk

There are loads of green spaces in the cities and good footpaths run along the shore in both Reykjavik and Akureyri. Once you're away from the city centre, which is pretty small in both cases, it's super quiet and you might even get the area to yourself, at least for a little while.

5. Embrace the weather

Us Brits famously love talking about the weather. Iceland's weather is changeable - seriously changeable, to the point that the Icelanders like to tell tourists, "don't like the weather? Wait 10 minutes."

When I walked out to the Grotta lighthouse, the weather changed within the space of a couple of minutes from bright sunshine to rolling fog across the bay. By the time I walked back to the city it was blazing hot again. Madness.

Budget

OK, so bearing in mind I'm travelling solo and aiming to be on the road for a year, here's a few figures to give you an idea of cost.

Accommodation: worked out about £25 per night, even staying in hostels. The one in Reykjavik worked out more expensive than my room in Akureyri, despite it being a 24 bed dorm. Also useful to bear in mind is that many (if not all) hostels in Iceland will charge you extra for linen, so it's helpful to take a sleeping bag wih you.

Food: I think I did quite well here and even with eating out 4 or 5 times, my food bill worked out at less than £8 a day. I shopped at Bonus, which is the closest Iceland gets to a discount supermarket, and when I ate out I went for soups, smaller portions (which are still pretty good sizes) and ate during the day instead of the evening when prices tend to go up.

Transport: in the cities, I walked - most of the attractions in Reykjavik are within easy walking distance of the centre and this is even more true of Akureyri. The public bus in Reykjavik costs 400-420 krona for a single trip, which is a bit more than £2. Intercity buses cost 9240 krona one way, which is about £56 at the moment. Not too bad for a 6 hour plus bus trip in a notoriously expensive country. Plus, the scenery is awesome.

Activities: My biggest expense -  £343, give or take. This covered 3 day trips with Reykjavik Excursions and a whale watching trip from Akureyri, plus several museums and a trip to the cinema. Clearly the biggest expense was the day trips, but if you don't drive, this is the easiest way to get out of the city and see Iceland's beautiful landscapes. Also, whales. I will never say no to whales. I failed to find a single free museum in Iceland. The cheapest was the Akureyri City Museum, at 1200 krona - about £7.25. Most in Reykjavik are 1500 krona, unless you're going to the Phallological Museum which is a bit cheaper and totally worth it for the gift of being able to say you've been to a museum dedicated almost entirely to giant whale penises.

Overall, Iceland met my expectations with regards to price and more than met them with regards to being awesome.

Anyone else been to Iceland and think I've missed something important? Do share.

Iceland: Waterfalls, volcanoes and rain

OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING.

Ahem. Anyway. In magical events this week, my Grand Tour which has been in the planning for the best part of 18 months (if not longer) has finally begun. I've spent the last few days in the beautiful city of Rekjavik. Well, actually, I've only really been in Reykjavik to sleep. Here's a quick recap of what I've been up to so far.

My trip started with the usual farting about with trains and then a lovely afternoon in London with Claire who gifted me this little chap

His name is Harold. He is now my mascot.

From London, I had to head to Gatwick to catch a flight the next day. All went well until I arrived in Reykjavik on Monday morning. See, EasyJet have these new-fangled bag drop machines so you don't even get to talk to someone when you dump your bag. All well and good, but when I arrived in Reykjavik my bag was nowhere to be seen. An hour and a half later, I thought, fuck it, I'm going to go and complain to the baggage people. Which took me past the oversized baggage area (which is just a dumping ground next to the carousels) and lo and behold, there was my bag. Fuming.

Aside from that, my first day in Reykjavik was lovely, if a little marred by sleep deprivation. I took a walk along the bay front.

And then, because I was still feeling a bit grouchy, I treated myself to fish and chips instead of cooking. Lovely little restaurant near the harbour provided me with ling, crispy potatoes and a mango flavoured dip. Different, but pretty good. Sorry, Grimsby!

The Golden Circle

My first real day in Iceland began much too early for my liking. Don't ask me why, but I clearly thought it was a great idea to book a tour that started at 7am when I'd had very little sleep and a very long day the day before.

That said, my trip to the Golden Circle was great fun. There were only 2 other people on the tour - everyone else was presumeably sensible enough to decide against such an early start - so we had the minibus to ourselves. Also, as I noticed at our first stop, setting off so early meant we got most of the sites to ourselves as well.

Said first stop was Fridheimar, a farm which grows tomatoes, mostly. I should maybe point out that I actually did the Golden Circle tour 18 months ago, so the idea of Icelanders growing tomatoes year round is no longer new to me, but it's interesting nonetheless. Also, a box of bees, which they get shipped from Holland every week to keep the tomatoes pollinated. Woo for bees.

From there, we headed to Gullfoss. I was especially looking forward to this because 18 months ago, the waterfall was mostly frozen over. Not so this time.

All of the pretties. There isn't much else to say about Gullfoss, so let's move on to the next stop, which was Geysir, the geyser from which all other geysers get their name. Geysir itself doesn't go off much any more, but its younger neighbour Strokkur does.

I should have quit while I was ahead with geyser photographs. Because just after I took that one, I decided to have another go. And the wind caught the plume just at the wrong moment. And poured it over me. Pretty sure I spent the rest of the day smelling of rotten eggs.

From there, we drove down to Thingvellir National Park, where Iceland's parliament, the Althingi, used to meet for about 700 years. Beautiful place.

Unfortunately, just after I took that photograph, I took this one.

And realised there was something seriously wrong with my camera, which after that shot just took pictures of funny coloured lines and splotches. This meant I spent much of the drive back to Reykjavik frantically trying to connect to the minibus WiFi to work out what was wrong and then had to traipse around the city to find a camera shop.

Which I did. And discovered that, as I feared, the camera was beyond help. So I bought a new one. At Icelandic prices, that's money I'd rather not have spent, but I can't be doing without a camera. Ugh.

My day was significantly improved by the lovely Icelandic chap who'd been in the camera shop at the same time and caught up with me as I was leaving. He gave me some suggestions for cool places to photograph, complete with directions and suggestions of the best times to be there to exploit Iceland's weird summer light. I'll say this - so far, I've found the Icelanders to be very friendly people.

South Shore Adventure

In the second of my early starts (although not as early as the day before) I headed off on another trip, this time to Iceland's beautiful south coast. Yet more hours stuck on a bus were more than made up for by the wonderful sights. Take Solheimajokull for a start.

It's a glacier. Coming off a volcano. Hence the black colour, I presume - from the ash? And then there's the tiny town of Vik and it's amazing black sand beach. I made the nistake of getting a bit too close to the sea and ended up with soggy boots. Fortunately said boots are waterproof so at least my feet were dry.

Vik was the furthest point of the trip from Reykjavik, so from there we headed back the way we came, stopping first at Reynisfjara, also a black sand beach. It also has these wonderful basalt columns - a bit like the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

While we were at the beach a lovely Canadian lady collared me after overhearing me mention going to Canada and proceeded to give me some suggestions on where to visit. Apparently I am capable of having conversations with strangers!

Then on to the little village of Skogar and its folk museum. Very interesting and I would have liked to have spent a bit more time there. Lots of information about traditional life in Iceland, including these funky two-thumbed mittens the fishermen used to wear.

They have two thumbs because their hands would get warm rowing and they could just flip them round to the cool side. Or something like that... Or maybe the thumbs wore out quick? It was something to do with rowing at any rate.

They also had a tub of bezoars, so if anyone gets poisoned, Skogar is the place to go.

Then just around the corner is beautiful Skogarfoss. It's a single drop waterfall and I couldn't resist the temptation to get as close as possible without getting soaked.

Which was going great until the wind changed and all the spray came in my direction. Oops. But hey, it was an experience.

I also got a bit drippy at the next stop, which was another waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. This one was especially cool, because you can actually walk behind the waterfall. Unfortunately, behind the waterfall is also spray-central, but at least this time I was wearing my waterproof. Clever me.

And from there, home. Well, back to the hostel.

Wonders of Snaefellsnes

Day three proper in Iceland dawned horribly early again. Fortunately, the tour I took turned out to be another minibus one with a lovely guide up to the Snaefellsnes peninsula. First stop proper was at Ytri Tunga where we attempted to do some seal-spotting. Unfortunately, the rain had set in and there were no seals to be found, although we did get divebombed by a couple of angry arctic terns.

Then the tiny settlement, if you can call it that, of Budir where there's a lava field and a pretty old church. And more rain, if you must know.

With the rain showing no sign of letting up, we hurried off to our next stop at Arnarstapi where we took a walk along the cliff top to admire the basalt formations. And get rained on some more. And shrieked at by more terns. I will admit that at this point my attempts to stay positive were beginning to falter.

Oh, and there's a troll on the hill.

Fortunately for my flagging morale, the next stop was lunch. I've been trying not to buy meals in Iceland because it's so very expensive, but at this point I didn't give a damn any more, so treated myself (ha) to a bowl of mushroom soup which came to 1500 krona. In case you're wondering, that's bloody expensive for a bowl of soup.

However, the soup was delicious and came with lovely fresh bread and really, it was just what I needed. That and a chat with the Irish chap on the tour who later kept me updated with the England-Wales Euro score. Nice chap.

After lunch, the stops became shorter - quick little photo stops along the north coast of the peninsula. The first of these was inside a volcano. Well... a pseudo-volcano.

You have to admit, it does look quite... volcano-ish. And it did form because of all the volcanism. And sod it, I just want to say I've been inside a volcano. So there.

Then we stopped at another lovely black sand beach, complete with surrounding lava field at Djupalonssandur. I had a bit of a moment on the beach when I realised the bits of old wreck lying about on the sand were from a Grimsby trawler. If anyone knows anything about a trawler called Epine, can you let me know?

And then I fell asleep and we stopped at Kirkjufell, which is a funny pointy mountain. My new camera, which had been behaving up until this point, decided it didn't like the light conditions so I've only got a couple of sort-of-decent photos from here.

From there, a quick stop to use the facilities at Grundafjordur and another at a place I couldn't pronounce (and can't even guess at) to see some more basalt columns. As Xavier, our guide, liked to keep pointing out - "this is not in the programme."

And then home. I think I might have fallen asleep again. During the drop offs, Xavier informed me that my hostel appears to own the last Big Mac sold in Iceland before MacDonalds pulled out. I'll have to see if I can find it.

In Cod We Trust

Or so went the saying at the Maritime Museum when I visited earlier today. They have an exhibition on at the moment about the cod wars, which my hometown was rather involved in. So I got to playing the game of "how many references to Grimsby can I find?"

Turns out to be quite a few. Overall, a great little exhibition, if understandably Iceland-biased. I spent the hour after that watching a great documentary about fishing in Iceland in the late 1800s, and then enjoyed the rest of the museum. Some funky little bits.

Basically, I've had a great start to my trip, even with the few little mishaps. Aside from yesterday, the weather's been great too, which I wasn't expecting. And, importantly, I've managed to have conversations with people. They might have been short and mostly someone else instigated them, but I don't care.

Tomorrow I have yet another early start because I've got to catch a bus up to Akureyri on the north coast where I'll be staying for the next few days before heading back to Reykjavik on Tuesday in time to catch my flight to Canada on Thursday.

So far, so good.