Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

I have written a lot of posts about Iceland over the past month. In this final post, I wanted to discuss our trip in general and share some of the photos I have not had chance to yet.

When we first arrived, the weather was very British. The area around the airport is not very interesting. Therefore it seems odd that the airport is 45 minutes away from Reykjavik, and why the car rental station is a mile away from the airport. As soon as we put some distance between outselves and Keflavik, the weather improved, as did the view.

Þingvallavatn

When we arrived we drove to our first hotel, Ion Hotel, located near lake Þingvallavatn, at the bottom of Þingvellir national park. We drove round the lake to get to Gullfoss and Geysir. Click the photo for a larger version.

After we checked out of Ion we headed north to Þingvellir.

Þingvellir

We stopped off at the Þingvellir visitor’s centre to take a look at the location of the historical Icelandic parliament.

After Þingvellir we drove north on what Iceland calls a road, but what anyone else would call a gravel track. They are not big on health and safety: we often found ourselves on step hills and twisty rosds with large drops just a foot off the track, with no safety barrier in sight.

This left the care filthy, which I was quite proud of. At the end of our stay, people were returning clean 4x4s. What’s the point? When we took our car back, they had to wash it before they could inspect it to see if there was any damage.

Snæfellsnes

We drove to the Snæfellsnes peninsula where we stayed at Hótel Búðir. I have covered this in those posts, but I love this photo of the petrol station in Borgarnes. Certainly beats the view ay my local station.

Reykjavik

To finish the trip, we drove to Reykjavik to spend a few days there. We went whale watching, visited the penis museum, Blue Lagoon and had a general wander round. We ate at a lot of fine restaurants too, as well as the Chuck Norris Grill.

Conclusion

Iceland is a cool place. The scenery is absolutely beautiful. It’s very Nordic; you could describe it as the Scottish Highlands on a much bigger scale.

The weather is good. There is a saying in Iceland, “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes”. I’m British, so this is lost on me. Their weather can be unpredictable, but in the week we were there, it was nothing compared to ours. It was fairly consistant while we were there, and very warm away from Reykjavik.

It is expensive. My god it is expensive. We were on our honeymoon, so we were not doing things on the cheap. This perhaps adds some bias to our spending. However, I found it significantly more expensive than Finland, which is not a cheap place either.

While in Reykjavik we went whale watching. There are a number of companies doing the tours: Elding and Special Tours do big-boats while another company offers inflatable rib boats. The latter allows you to get closer, but you don’t get the luxury of a nice big boat you can go inside, and it is twice the price.

We went dolphin watching while in the Highlands and that was amazing as the dolphins come and swim alongside the boat, jumping out of the water.

Whales are not like that. They come up to take a few breaths and then go for a dive. You see a fin maybe as they sit below the surface and then the tail as they dive down, but that is about it. Generally, this is from quite a distance. You see a whale of course, which is cool, but you don’t physically see much.

The photos are taken with my 200mm lens and were clearer than you could see with the eye.

When you get on the boat, they offer you a seat of warm overalls to put on. I would recommend taking them up on this. Elina and I came prepared: Finnish woolly socks, fleeces and my new extra-warm coat and it was still a bit chilly.

Overall, I think I was disappointed with the whale watching. I think it was around £50 each, so that’s £100 for the two of us, and you just don’t see much. You could get closer by taking the rib boat, but then that is around £200 for a couple.

I do not advice messing with the Icelandic coastguard. They have battle ships.

On my previous trips to Finland I discovered just how much daylight there is when you go north. However, there was always some kind of a night in Finland.

For example, here is a photo I took shortly before midnight while visiting in mid-July:

It is not exactly a proper night, but it has got darker. There is something you could genuinely refer to as night there. Iceland is not like that. Even by the start of June, anything you would describe as night has disappeared.

It is difficult to represent exactly what it looks like because you are always interpreting the scene through the exposure setting. However, I took a few photos from my hotel window shortly after midnight.

I purposely have not done any editing on these images. There is a clear difference between the first two and the last one, depending on what I told my camera to set the exposure by, but none of them really class as anything other than daylight.

This was from my bathroom window, a room which you could easily use without switching a light on. Equally, while you have to have your lights on at all time while driving in Iceland, it was enough light to do without them.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum, better known as the penis museum, houses the world’s largest collection of animal penises. The collection has been going since 1974 when it was founded by Sigurður Hjartarson. It now has 282 specimens from 93 different species.

A lot of the species come from around the Iceland area, and whale penises are featured heavily. They are huge.

There are many other animals also, and even some folklore penises: such as troll penis and elf penis. The museum now has several human penises too, after several people offered to donate theirs after their death.

The museum is based in one room, with some side compartments, so will not take you long to get round. It is worth the visit just for the novelty of it. They do some nice merchandise too.

Hallgrímskirkja church is a Lutherin church that forms the focal point of Reykjavik. It is one of the tallest buildings in Iceland and situated on the top of a hill, can be seen from almost anywhere in the city.

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Icelanders seem to have a good sense of humour. Take this t-short for example…

What part of Eyjafjallajökull do you not understand? Or how about this one…

Bars offer free wifi and Islandic beer…

How could you possibly be confused by that? Said bars are clear about what they think of intolerance…

And they like to paint their bathrooms like red-light districts…

A perfect backdrop for a honeymoon.

While staying at Hótel Búðir on the Snæfellsnes peninsula, we spend some time exploring the area, including driving down to Hellnar for a closer look at the Snæfellsjökull glacier.

There are quite a few of them, so if you’re not on the post page itself, you will need to click through to that to see them all. Alternatively, if you can see more than one below, you are already on that page. Click any photo to get a larger version.

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Hótel Búðir, spelt Hotel Budir in English, is a hotel located on the Snæfellsnes peninsula. It does not have a hot tub, or proper blinds for the windows, but what it lacks in these features it more than makes up for in location. Not to mention the friendly staff, excellent food and lovely decor.

You could definitely have a worse view. The other window, and the bathroom, look out across the Snæfellsjökull glacier.

The hotel seems to have a bit of a rock and roll attitude. Some of the rooms only seem accessible by crossing the roof. This is definitely worth a visit even if you are not in one of those rooms, simply for the panoramic view.

Their restaurant is busy, but the food is tasty, beautifully presented and comes in reasonable-sized portions.

Just up above the hotel is Búðir church. It has been re-built several times since the original.

Beyond the church is the ocean, and a surprising amount of sandy beach.

Without a doubt, Hótel Búðir offered us the most beautiful location of the trip. Mountains, a glacier, a waterfall and the ocean, all visible from the same room.

The Ion Adventure Hotel is located in Þingvellir, Iceland. You get there by taking route 36, unless it is winter, in which case you have to go a different way because the road is closed. Winter remember, is October to May.

With the whole area to choose from, they decided to build the hotel next to the geothermal power station. You really can smell the sulphur, which smells like eggs, but it didn’t bother us.

The location is very convient for exploring Geysir, Gullfuss and Þingvellir. All of these are within an hour’s drive. When both the clouds clear and the wind blows the steam from the power station out of the way, you get a beautiful view.

They have a huge huge tub (it is an eight metre pool, half a metre deep). If anything it was too hot, especially for Elina and the bump. I loved it. I went in twice a day, once after breakfast and once before going to bed. It was only really that Elina insisted on doing things that caused me to get out.

Once end of the building is given over to their Northern Lights Bars. We didn’t see any of the Northern Lights, given it was light the whole time, but we did get a beautiful panoramic view of the surrounding countryside.

Click to see in full size.

They have a restaurant, and also offer a bar menu (which seems to be bigger than the restaurant menu) in the Northern Lights Bar.

The room itself was nice. There was desk and chair, the bed was comfortable, and it came with a floor to ceiling window looking out onto the snow-capped mountain. The curtains did an excellent job of blocking out the light.

Some of it felt a bit dated, and maybe in need of a little love. The above shows the handle on our window. However, the window did open fully, and much of the hotel was modern: every room had an iPad Mini and their communal areas were filled with Sonos Play:3s.

I would definitely stay here again. The staff were friendly, the room was nice and the view was excellent.