Springing back to Iceland to see it in the green! COMPLETED 6/29 About This Page:

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Pre-trip report – part three: I booked it for this… and now it’s closed?

The amazing beach at Vik I mentioned in the last instalment is a couple of hours’ drive from the airport, and that means we’ll be renting a car, which will be a first for us out there. The last time we visited, we just took the bus into Reykjavik, and then took guided tours. Mind you, there was snow everywhere, and although Mark said he’d be fine with driving, I wasn’t sure about it. I didn’t think he needed the stress. Hopefully, we won’t encounter any snow on this visit…

As I write this though, in early April, it’s not exactly looking promising. The long range weather forecast on Accuweather is saying that the real feel temperature will be around freezing (32°F) and predicts that we might get some snow and rain. Ok, not exactly what we were hoping for. I guess we’ll be getting those thermals and snow boots out again then…

When I booked the car rental, I also booked a GPS. I don’t usually do that, but I figured it would be useful out there. After all, some of their letters are slightly different, and I’m not sure how our GPS, which does cover Europe, would cope with that. As a back-up, I’m also putting maps and directions into our written itinerary just in case. Normally I’d use Google Maps on my phone, but I’m a bit worried about what might happen if we have no phone signal, and I’m sure that will be a real possibility outside of the main towns and cities.

A perfect example of how the letters differ comes from our first stop. Now I’ll give you the other name for it in a minute. In our writing, we’d call it the Thorvaldseyri Visitor Centre, but in the Icelandic language, it’s written as þorvaldseyri. See what I mean?

So what is this visitor centre? Well, the other name for it is the Eyjafjallajokull Erupts visitor centre. Now, as the name suggests, this is the famous volcano that erupted back in 2010, and basically brought air travel across Europe for six days. I remember it well. We weren’t directly affected by it, but I knew someone at work who was on holiday in Australia, who got stranded there for another week. Tough life, huh?

We were very grateful we were taking our own car on various road trips into Europe that year (around Northern France in June and then Switzerland in September), as rental car prices also went through the roof. Why? Well, some people were desperate to get home (don’t forget, if you weren’t in work, it was taken out of your holiday if you couldn’t work where you were on vacation) and hired out rental cars, and drove back. Stories of people driving back from the south of France, Italy and Spain to the UK were not uncommon, and as a result, the rental cars all ended up thousands of miles away from their regular bases, as these were one way rentals. Add to that, there’s not much call for a car that drives on the right over here, as we still drive on the left, and the rental companies ended up paying out a fortune to get cars back to where they’d started from.

I’m fascinated by the fact that the visitor centre opened up 14 April 2011, when the ash settled, and I’m looking forward to learning more about this completely unpronounceable volcano. Perhaps I’ll even learn how to pronounce it?

We’ll also be visiting this waterfall, Skogafoss:

http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/previews/03947_skogafossiceland_672x420.jpg

Once again, doesn’t it look amazing? I have a feeling that, between these various stops, there will be a lot of photos taken on day one!

We’re spending the night at Country Hotel Anna, which I found on hotels.com and the reviews look good on TripAdvisor, so I went for it. What I really liked was the fact they have a hot tub and sauna, which sounded great to me (although maybe not so great, given the temperatures we may be experiencing while we’re out there… ). They’ve got Icelandic horses in the fields nearby, and while we’ve met some before on our previous trip, they are one of the main draws of the country, so I wouldn’t say to seeing some more. Also, they include a buffet breakfast in the room rate, which should hopefully set us up nicely for our next day…

Saturday 29 April

The next day we’re going to re-cover some of the ground we went over on our first visit to Iceland, and this was one of the reasons we wanted to go back. We’ll head over to Geysir, a town which gave its name to the geyser. The last time we were there, it had snow around. I don’t expect it will look that much different, but we really enjoyed seeing it last time, and I’m hoping it will be less icy, as I had to take a lot of care not to slip over.

Then we’ll head over to the Gulfoss waterfalls nearby, which is something we’re hoping will look a lot different. The last time we saw it, it was completely iced up… like this:


There was also a sign there that showed us what it looks like in summer, and this is one of the many reasons we decided to return:



Hopefully it will at least look a little like this picture…

We’ll then make our way to Skarfabakki harbour, which is where you catch the Videy Island ferry. I fancied visiting the island on our last trip, but it just didn’t fit in, as the harbour isn’t exactly in the middle of the city. With a car, getting there is a lot easier. The ferry service is limited during the winter months to say the least. They only have three sailings on a weekend afternoon, and each boat only takes 38 passengers, so I hope we can make it. I did think about booking our tickets beforehand, but then again, if it’s going to be really cold, we may not want to actually go…

We’re staying the night at the Nordurey Hotel and this is where it gets a bit frustrating. I deliberately chose it as it was a bit out of the city, and a lot cheaper than most other places. Apart from the fact that it was a Saturday night, I have no idea why all the hotels were so darned expensive.

Anyway, there was another reason why I was happy to be more out of town this night, as I had plans to go out to dinner at the Perlan, which was home to a restaurant, and this offered superb views of Reykjavik. Notice how I used the past tense? Well, it’s now closed down. I couldn’t believe it when I logged on to their website. So now what? Ugh!

Well, the hotel we’re staying at isn’t in a neighbourhood with lots of dining options. Trust me, I have looked, and looked, and looked. I still can’t make up my mind what to do. We might drive into Reykjavik and eat there, but I think it will partially depend on parking at the hotel. If it’s going to be a nightmare to get a space there, then maybe we’ll stay put. We’ll see. I would prefer to have some definite plans (too much of the Disney planner in me I guess! ) but we’ll wing it, and hopefully we’ll be fine. After all, it’s a city, and there should be plenty of places to pick from…

And maybe it’s just as well that we don’t have dinner booked. We did have to rush our way through our dinner a little bit in Northern Ireland a couple of weekends ago, because I wanted to get back to our bed and breakfast place in time for Doctor Who. I am a massive fan, and have been since the programme’s 20th anniversary all the way back in 1983, so imagine how I felt when I found out it would be returning to our TV screens on Easter Saturday? I immediately worked out all the nights it would be showing, and the amount of times we wouldn’t be around.

Iceland is an hour behind us at present, as we’re on British Summer Time, an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, and I guess Iceland doesn’t put their clocks forward for summer, hence the time difference, as when we visited in February, we were on the same time zone. Mind you, I guess they don’t need to add an extra hour, given sunrise is just after 5:00am when we’re there, and sunset isn’t until after 9:30pm. That’s going to be a bit freaky, as that’s usually about the longest day we get here in the summer. So that means we either go out super early for dinner, or leave it until more towards the peak dining period if I want to watch Doctor Who live… of course that’s even if the hotel we’re staying at has the BBC. Thank goodness for their iPlayer, that’s all I can say.

Next: what do you mean, they don’t start until 15 May?