Iceland Trip Review

Very interesting to visit but very expensive, everything from day trips to a bottle of Coke will shock you if you are not ready for it, use the duty free to get what you want. This bottle of Vodka was $80


Entering the country took all of 20-30 minutes, customs was a sign "something to declare go left, nothing to declare go right, if you go right, you walk out of the airport. I think they are relying on other countries doing their screening, but getting out is another issue, get to the airport at least two hours early, they will question you at least twice about your bags. I think it's because they don't want a black eye with something happening on an outbound flight.

Take a 220/110 converter for cell phone charging and other electronics, this is the one I use LINK .

Reykjavik is the largest city which hold over 2/3 of the population of the country, and tourism is growing like crazy right now, you will probably see as many tourists as you will locals.

Lodging I stayed at Hotel Holt think of it as an oversize guesthouse, the rooms are nice but nothing fancy, but it's less than five minuets walk to the main street with bars, restaurants, and shopping. There are few "traditional" hotels like Hilton and more going in all the time. The staff was great and I got connected with the late night guy Ragnar (no joke) and he helped steer me towards smaller tours instead of the big bus tours.

Day trips, there are a ton, Golden Circle, South Coast, Ice Caves, hot springs, snowmobiling, horseback riding, tours up on the glacier, Norther Lights, etc. I would stay away from Reykjavik Excursions as they are a huge tour company and in my two experiences with them they treated stuff like cattle herding.

I did the Golden Circle (awesome tour) with Grey Line tours, and they were great in all my experiences with them.

Hot Springs, I did Secret Lagoon and it was good but if you are going to do one, just go ahead and book Blue Lagoon, but book AT LEAST a week in advance.

South Shore is another trip I did and it rained all day but still was a good tour, I brought rain gear so I was prepared.

Northern Lights are hit or miss depending on weather, clouds, strength, and if your tour guide finds a clearing. Sadly I did not see them, I went out one night and it was too cloudy, the other nights all tours were canceled.

I didn't go on the Ice Cave tour because it was raining that day also.

Fun facts:
- Icelanders believe in Trolls and Elves, not joking.
- Very few trees, the joke is "if you get lost in an Icelandic forest, just stand up."
- The water you are drinking right now melted from the glaciers 1K years ago and has been being filters for that long, so do drink the water.
- There are toilets on the tours that take credit cards if you don't have coins for them.
- Do not call their horses "ponies" it will offend them, turns our it's one of the purest breed of horses in the world, they banned importing horses to preserve the purity.
- They see one or two polar bears a year and send someone out to shoot them because after floating on ice for weeks they are ravenous and will attack anything.

The food is interesting, and even things like hot dogs aren't quite the same, the Cod and Salmon are very good. I had Icelandic Lobster and it was the size of a large prawn, don't know if it was just the one I got or if they are all that way. Probably the best meal I had was the Lamb Crown at Solon Bistro.

You can eat Horse if you want.


Almost everyone speaks at least enough English to get by so no worries there.

Currency, you don't really need it for much because they take credit cards everywhere.

Tipping, very few place even have a line for a tip on the bill so it's not expected, I used the currency I had for leaving one if I had a great experience, I also used currency to tip the tour guides if they were good. I expect as tourism grows they will learn the way of "give me a tip."


I will probably update this over the next week or so as I see things I left out.

I will post a few pics in the next post, but the rest of the pics and vids can be found Here if you are interested.