Goodbye Iceland, Hello Italy!
Another early morning to catch our flight to Brussels then on to Milan where we spend the night. Iceland has been fun, very nice people, good roads and awesome scenery. I think if I was to sum up the trip here it would go like this:
Arrivals and customs are very well organized (except you do have to walk into the terminal from the plane – even while it’s raining, and the wind is blowing 30mph). Total time to clear into country was less than 30 minutes.
Rental car process is fairly straight forward, but buy the SAAP insurance, always!
Don’t pay for a tour of the Golden Circle. Rent a car, make the easy drive and see what you want as long as you want. Tours can be $150USD per person, that’s a hell of a car rental!
Every house on the island is a guesthouse so shop around for best prices. We found that hotels / B&B’s and Guesthouses were more reasonable out side of Reykjavik. Still, be ready to hand over about $175 – 200USD per night. There are hostels, but homey don’t do that.
Food. Restaurants and fairly plentiful, sometimes. Most cost a small fortune for average size portions. Best deal, buy sandwich makings at the store and save yourself a few bucks.
Alcohol is unbelievably expensive!!! Best deal is to buy your alcohol at the duty free store on your way. There is also a duty free store in the Reykjavik airport that will allow arriving passengers to purchase goods. Not sure how that works but for those who wait, you have one last chance.
Roads are good, except for that 10 mile stretch of mud. Easy driving and GPS worked everywhere.
English is spoken throughout the country and so is Icelandic which is a wonderful language to listen to.
The tourist sites here are mostly made by nature. If you hike, bike or pack, this is going to be heaven. If you’re driving, there’s a good 10 days of exploring and seeing the sites but after that, may get a little “been there, done that”ish. You may want to think about renting a 4-wheel drive, high clearance vehicle and really explore the lava fields. They even have cars with tent campers attached to the roof so you can try out the wilderness areas or campgrounds. Just remember, no traveling on “F” roads without 4-wheel drive.
Not sure you can rent these, but damn they look cool! Yeah, it’s a Mercedes!
Relax! Take a down day to just sit where you’re at and enjoy the world going by.
OK, checked into our B&B at the airport. Not much of a B&B, this is an old military base converted to hotels, that’s why the airport is 30 miles from Reykjavik. Fun fact:
it’s 1940 and WW2 has started. Germany has just invaded Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserubung, 9 April. At 0600hrs Denmark capitulates to Germany making this the shortest battle for Germany in WW2, less than 6 hours. Norway was a little harder, that battles lasted 2 months, until May 1940.
What the hell does this have to do with Iceland, well I’ll tell you. England, being afraid that Adolf would make his way further north decided to beat him at his own game and invade Iceland. Now at the time, Iceland had no real army or any military actually, just police forces. They did have a few Germans living there but by and large, they were sitting this out. They had declared themselves neutral and would not allow more than 3 military vessels from one nation in their harbor at any one time. Do I have to say it, “yeah and what are you going to do about it”?
England gathers up some 800+ troops, most have never fired their rifles so that had to wait until they were on the ship heading to Iceland. Off they went, full steam ahead to conquer a land and keep it away from them nasty ole Nazis.
As they approached Reykjavik, the town spotter saw their ships and notified the mayor, who notified the governor, who notified the council, who notified the citizens that someone was coming. By this time a small contingent of 200 or so Brits were in their “invasion” boats heading for the main pier. Upon arriving there they found that so many of the towns people had gathered at the dock, they were unable to get off their boats. The British commander, in a very authoritative voice, asked the people to move back so they could invade (actually, so they could just get out of the boats). The reply, “certainly”.
So that’s how Iceland became an Allied base in WW2. Of course, the US quickly moved in to establish a resupply base and then everyone went back to what they were doing, raising sheep and hay.
Enough for the history lesson, off to bed so we can catch our flight and begin the next segment of our adventure.
Here’s a few final pics of Iceland:
Cheers