Top Tips:
- It’s difficult to find useful detailed maps of
the whole country, but there are good maps made for specific regions.
- Our GPS couldn’t recognize the majority of the
attractions we visited. You can find GPS coordinates to help it direct you at
this website. Most attractions can be found with a tourist map and following
signs, but the GPS still helped relieve the stress of searching for directions.
- Þingvellir National Park only takes 1-3 hours to
see.
- Geysir and Gulfoss are must-see attractions in a
day trip from Reykjavik.
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| Þingvellir |
Sunday, September 1
Today turned out to be a bit of an ordeal. Not the greatest
welcome to the country, thanks to some fateful weather, but just a bit dramatic.
We woke early and had breakfast at the Fosshotel Baron. Breakfast
was pretty standard, offering breads, a waffle iron, meat platter, croissants,
fresh fruit, cereal, sausages and omelette. We ate so much for breakfast that
we lasted until dinner time without feeling hungry.
Our first stop was Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park. We hit our
first obstacle – the GPS did not recognize this popular tourist attraction, nor
the names of the towns nearby. Stopping at a gas station, the tourists maps
available didn’t offer much better assistance, being very basic poorly scaled
maps of the entire island, and there were no detailed maps available for
purchase. The station staff were very friendly and helpful, giving us detailed
instructions to travel to the park’s visitors centre. When we reached the Þingvellir
information centre about 40 minutes later, there were a few maps available for
purchase – the choice was of regional detailed maps, costing $20 per region,
and not practical for our whole island trip – or $20 for a general map of the
island which was no better than the tourist maps available for free. We didn’t
bother to buy any of these maps.
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| Þingvellir National Park |
From here we were directed to the Þingvellir Visitor’s
centre (yes, a different place), about 4-5 minutes drive away. From the
visitors centre you can walk down to see the historic buildings and waterfalls.
You can walk further into the park along several different trails towards Skógarkot,
which is an old Viking farm. We chose to do this walk, taking the Gönguvegur
trail to Skógarkot, and returning via the Skógarkotsvegur trail.
The first
500-700 metres of the Gönguvegur trail was breathtaking, with glistening mossy
mounds leading far out towards the mountains in the distance. The trail leads
to a rivine that you climb down to cross – this area was spectacular.
From here on, the scenery becomes more mundane, and there’s still about 1.5 km to go to reach the Viking farm. Also, the Gönguvegur trail got muddier, narrower, and more irregular. This is clearly an old trail, which makes it more interesting to walk, but more irritating to walk in the rain and mud. Skógarkot farm is so non-descript and anti-climactic, that when we asked hikers along the way how far it was to this destination, no one knew because they didn’t notice it!
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| The rivine on the Gönguvegur trail |
From here on, the scenery becomes more mundane, and there’s still about 1.5 km to go to reach the Viking farm. Also, the Gönguvegur trail got muddier, narrower, and more irregular. This is clearly an old trail, which makes it more interesting to walk, but more irritating to walk in the rain and mud. Skógarkot farm is so non-descript and anti-climactic, that when we asked hikers along the way how far it was to this destination, no one knew because they didn’t notice it!
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| The Gönguvegur trail |
Well, it started to rain, but we pushed further along the
trail eager to see the Skógarkot Viking farm, thinking it must be good because
all trails lead to it. The rain pushed harder too, saturating our outerwear and
dampening my clothes through my Gortex jacket, rainpants and shoes (I really
should have been as waterproof as you can get!). We finally reached Skógarkot,
which truly is barely noticeable. The farm consists of some crumbled rock
fences. That is all. There’s no distinguishing Viking appearance to the farm,
it looks more like a run down English-style farmland. Unless you’re looking for
it, you’ll probably walk right past it.
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| Skógarkot |
From here, the Skógarkotsvegur trail was easy to find, and a
much easier paved walk back to the Þingvellir Visitor’s centre. Had we not been
soaked through by this point, we’d have visited the waterfall. But everyone was sopping wet and we really needed to find our hotel and get changed.
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| The Gönguvegur trail |
The Car Drama
In the heavy rain, it was just perfect timing for the
driver’s window to get stuck open. Don’t ask why it was opened, but you can be sure it wasn’t capable of closing. We
had to call the rental company, who arranged to meet us at the hotel to
exchange for a car with windows that could open AND close. The transaction went
smoothly and the owner was easy going about the whole thing and came out right
away (an hours drive for him) to bring us the replacement car. The new car was
no better than the old one – yes the windows worked, but it was an older model
car with squeakier windshield wipers (this improved with time), and we realized
later there was no rearview mirror, but Mike liked that this one was a manual.
For the price of
this car rental, this is a major deal for us – we’ve rented a new, diesel
efficient 4WD in Switzerland (which is generally a pretty expensive country)
for the same price as this dated gas-guzzling 4WD. For the price difference between this and other rental companies we
saw in Iceland, I really can’t complain. It’s just another example of the
difference in price : quality ratio to expect in Iceland. The nice thing about
this rental is that the owner ran the business, and this issue was dealt with
immediately and in person.
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| A rock garden on the drive in to Þingvellir |
Accommodation
We arrived for early check-in at our next hotel – Hotel
Grimsborgir. Now, this hotel was beautiful and quaint, and undoubtedly the best
hotel in the region. It’s also probably the most expensive – renting at
$360/night. By North American standards, for this price I expect an above
standard room in a 5-star hotel in most cities. Here, you receive a beautiful
24 sq. ft room with heated tile floors (loved this), cable TV that actually
works, free WiFi on a 3G network – limited to checking email and browsing only,
one of the nicest bathrooms we experienced here, individual patios, access to
the hot tubs outside, and a European breakfast. The whole place was incredibly
clean. For such a premium price, several things were missing that would be
assumed in North America - like shampoo, tissues, other related bathroom
products, and turndown services. On request they will clean the room, but they
did not make the bed or tidy anything, must have just cleaned the floor up a
bit. This really highlights the disconnect between Iceland and North American
service standards.
After a quick dip in the hot tub and cleaning up into some
dry clothes, I found a way to make good use of the GPS. Since it was unable to
recognize even the most obvious of tourist attractions, like Þingvellir or
Geysir, I found a website to locate the GPS coordinates of these destinations. I used this website and Google Maps to note the coordinates
of most of the destinations for our trip.
Geysir
We tested this process out for Geysir and Gulfoss, since we
had already seen some signs to these places from Þingvellir. These attractions
are about 10 minutes from each other, and an hour from our hotel.
From the Geysir carpark, you cross the road and walk towards the steam emenating from the ground.
You’ll walk past bubbling hot-pot rockpools before reaching the Little Geysir, followed by The Geysir.
Even knowing what to expect, the Geysir
was more awesome than imagined. The sound of the blowhole is impressive, and
the anticipation as it bubbled made the explosion of water even more exciting.
It erupts every 10 minutes, but after the first eruption there is a secondary
one about a minute later, so stick around.
From the Geysir carpark, you cross the road and walk towards the steam emenating from the ground.
You’ll walk past bubbling hot-pot rockpools before reaching the Little Geysir, followed by The Geysir.
Gulfoss
From here we made the quick trip to Gulfoss. Sadly it was
too cold, we were too soaked from rain (again), and the wind was too infernal
for us to spend long at this natural wonder. It’s hard to take photos from the
main viewing platform because waterfall spray floods this area. There are a few
trails to lead to different viewpoints for this majestic large waterfall. I dare
say, this waterfall could be more beautiful than Niagara Falls. It is worth a
drive out from Reyjavik just to see this waterfall, and then with Geysir nearby
there really are no excuses not to come out here even for a day trip.
Dinner
We returned to the Hotel Grimsborgir for a Sunday buffet
dinner. This hotel has reputably the best restaurant in the area. I can’t
comment too much on comparisons because we ate here for breakfast and dinner,
and practically missed lunch for both days we stayed here. The buffet dinner
involved a lot of seafood, which my family isn’t big on. I tried a couple of
salmon dishes that were incredibly fresh and not at all fishy. For the most
part I kept to the roast dinner items. I tried the roast lamb – an Icelandic
masterpiece – like no other lamb I have ever tasted anywhere. The meat was
smooth, rich in flavor and soft in texture. I can see why Iceland locals
complain that they can’t find proper lamb anywhere else in the world – this
lamb was spectacular. The $65/pp for a buffet meal felt a bit exorbitant, and
as I've mentioned before, we are not generally enthusiastic about buffets, but
we were all satisfied with our meal. We returned the next day for dinner again
though and were very disappointed with the food.
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