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TO YOUR HEALTH: We found a bottle of cod liver oil, right, on the breakfast buffet at the Icelandair Hotel Reykjavik Natura.
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PREPARE FOR TAKEOFF NOISE: And other guests of the Natura were shocked to find their rooms overlooked the runways of Reykjavik's domestic airport, which was quite active in the mornings and afternoons. Luckily, our room was on the other side of the hotel, out of earshot of jet engines and turboprops. This view is from outside the elevator on the fourth floor.
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WHEN YOU ARRIVE, YOU MIGHT THINK YOU'VE LANDED ON MOON
Editor's note: This is the fourth and final post on my weeklong vacation in surprising Iceland, which is grappling with a boom in tourism nine years after the country's 2008 economic collapse.
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- Believe me when I say I wanted to fall in love with Icelandair, the national airline of this big island in the North Atlantic Ocean.
As a longtime United Airlines customer who has been mistreated repeatedly, crammed into uncomfortable seats, and deprived of complimentary food and entertainment, Icelandair seemed like a breath of fresh air.
Originally, I was planning to buy an airfare-hotel package so me and my wife could celebrate an important wedding anniversary in Iceland in August.
But then I jumped at an Icelandair sale, round-trip airfare of only $399 each, including all taxes and fees, hundreds less than we paid United to fly us to New Orleans in April.
To meet a tourism boom, Iceland is expanding the international airport terminal, and building new hotels in and around Reykjavik, the capital, as fast as possible.
So, when I tried to book a room a couple of months before our departure, my choice was limited.
I finally reserved 7 nights in a "Queen Superior Room" at Icelandair's Hotel Reykjavik Natura at a daily rate of $350, not including breakfast.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- Believe me when I say I wanted to fall in love with Icelandair, the national airline of this big island in the North Atlantic Ocean.
As a longtime United Airlines customer who has been mistreated repeatedly, crammed into uncomfortable seats, and deprived of complimentary food and entertainment, Icelandair seemed like a breath of fresh air.
Bait and switch
Originally, I was planning to buy an airfare-hotel package so me and my wife could celebrate an important wedding anniversary in Iceland in August.
But then I jumped at an Icelandair sale, round-trip airfare of only $399 each, including all taxes and fees, hundreds less than we paid United to fly us to New Orleans in April.
To meet a tourism boom, Iceland is expanding the international airport terminal, and building new hotels in and around Reykjavik, the capital, as fast as possible.
So, when I tried to book a room a couple of months before our departure, my choice was limited.
I finally reserved 7 nights in a "Queen Superior Room" at Icelandair's Hotel Reykjavik Natura at a daily rate of $350, not including breakfast.
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| OH MY ACHING BACK: The Icelandair Hotel Reykjavik Natura was built in 1966 and, though it has been completely renovated, our room resembled an oversized shoe box. The so-called queen-size bed was so uncomfortable my wife asked for extra bedding and slept on the floor for two nights before we cut short our stay and moved to another hotel. |
'Express cleaning'
Our overnight flight from Newark arrived about 6:30 in the morning.
On the 45-minute ride to the hotel, we stared bleary eyed at a vast plain of petrified lava stretching away on both sides of the bus, making us think we had landed on the moon.
We arrived at the hotel around 8:30 a.m. and asked to check in early. We we're told we'd have to pay nearly $30 extra for "express cleaning."
We agreed to that, and decided to try the hotel's breakfast buffet while we waited; that was more than $30 each.
Later, we need a converter to use our cell-phone chargers in the room, and that cost $15. During our stay, we saw a similar converter for $3.49 in a convenience store.
One appealing feature of the Natura is a full-service spa with a small swimming pool, but even though we were hotel guests, we were charged an admission fee of about $27, in addition to what we paid for massages.
And though the hotel is operated by another company in the Icelandair Group, guests don't receive points in the airline's frequent-flier program for their stay.
The only benefit of staying at the Natura was free tickets for the municipal bus system, a real plus because the hotel isn't near the city center.
The overpriced hotel was bad enough, but before our flight, we accepted the airline's Class Up email invitation to bid for "Economy Comfort" -- even more legroom, meals, liquor, and seats in the same row with a table instead of a stranger separating us.
Although we paid $110 each in both directions to Class Up, the food was just OK, and we never got three seats to ourselves.
In fact, on the way home, we were in rows separated by a large exit door near the front of the aircraft, and I had to shout over my shoulder and the high seat back to speak to my wife.
The airline responded to my complaint by promising a refund of $220, not the $440 I requested, plus $29 for food I ordered before I got the Class Up offer.
When we decided to move out of Icelandair's Natura Hotel, I checked Trivago, but then called the Fosshotel Reykjavik in the city center for a more reasonably priced room.
The woman at the front desk offered me a standard room for just under $235 a night, including a large buffet breakfast -- about $140 a night less than what we paid for our room and breakfast at the Natura.
On the 45-minute ride to the hotel, we stared bleary eyed at a vast plain of petrified lava stretching away on both sides of the bus, making us think we had landed on the moon.
We arrived at the hotel around 8:30 a.m. and asked to check in early. We we're told we'd have to pay nearly $30 extra for "express cleaning."
We agreed to that, and decided to try the hotel's breakfast buffet while we waited; that was more than $30 each.
Later, we need a converter to use our cell-phone chargers in the room, and that cost $15. During our stay, we saw a similar converter for $3.49 in a convenience store.
One appealing feature of the Natura is a full-service spa with a small swimming pool, but even though we were hotel guests, we were charged an admission fee of about $27, in addition to what we paid for massages.
And though the hotel is operated by another company in the Icelandair Group, guests don't receive points in the airline's frequent-flier program for their stay.
The only benefit of staying at the Natura was free tickets for the municipal bus system, a real plus because the hotel isn't near the city center.
Icelandair Class Up
The overpriced hotel was bad enough, but before our flight, we accepted the airline's Class Up email invitation to bid for "Economy Comfort" -- even more legroom, meals, liquor, and seats in the same row with a table instead of a stranger separating us.
Although we paid $110 each in both directions to Class Up, the food was just OK, and we never got three seats to ourselves.
In fact, on the way home, we were in rows separated by a large exit door near the front of the aircraft, and I had to shout over my shoulder and the high seat back to speak to my wife.
The airline responded to my complaint by promising a refund of $220, not the $440 I requested, plus $29 for food I ordered before I got the Class Up offer.
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| LOOK, MA, NO SCAFFOLD: Window washers don't use scaffolds at the Fosshotel Reykjavik -- the largest hotel in Iceland -- where we stayed for four nights after three expensive and uncomfortable nights at the Icelandair Hotel Reykjavik Natura. |
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| At Fosshotel, our large corner room, No. 601, had a bigger, far more comfortable bed than the torture rack at the Natura, plus a walk-in shower in the bathroom, below. |
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| In eco-conscious Iceland, recycling bins were in the room at Fosshotel, above, and in the hallway at the Natura Hotel. |
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| Buttermilk covering granola, nuts and fresh fruit from the large buffet breakfast at Fosshotel Reykjavik. The buffet, included in the price of the room, lacked only the smoked and cured fish on the buffet at the Icelandair Hotel Reykjavik Natura, which charges up to $30 for breakfast. |
Fosshotel Reykjavik
The woman at the front desk offered me a standard room for just under $235 a night, including a large buffet breakfast -- about $140 a night less than what we paid for our room and breakfast at the Natura.
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EXPLOSIVE: On the Delicious Golden Circle Food Tour, which includes a four-course farm-to-table lunch, we stopped to see the lively Strokkur geyser, which erupts every 5 minutes or so, above and below.
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| Another stop was the Gullfoss waterfall. |
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The Delicious Golden Circle Food Tour visited the Efstidalur Farm, where my 4-course farm-to-table lunch included an entree of fresh trout from a nearby glacial river, above, and a salad with smoked trout, below. Meat eaters were served grass-fed lamb and beef, in addition to trout. The meal also included homemade soup and sheep's milk ice cream for dessert.
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| Reykjavik, the capital, is at lower left. Flights from the United States arrive at Keflavik International Airport to the west of the city (Credit: Lonely Planet). |
'Fire and Ice' tours
Iceland is sometimes called the Island of Fire and Ice, a reference to its long volcanic history and an Ice Age of about 600 years.
The 40,000-square-mile island is said to have been formed 20 million years ago during a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in the North Atlantic.
Iceland, which declared its independence in 1944, has a population of only 344,000, and welcomes immigration. The largest group of immigrants in recent years comes from Poland.
Today, in addition to seeing active volcanoes, vast fields of petrified lava and black sand beaches, tourists can ride all-terrain vehicles to the top of glaciers.
Gray Line Iceland's all-day Delicious Golden Circle Food Tour on a minibus cost about $250 a person, including three food stops.
Icelanders say August is the first of nine months of winter, and when the sun wasn't shining, we encountered drizzle and rain blowing sideways, and temperatures in the 40s.
Umbrellas are useless.
The weather was especially bad during our tour of Snaefellsnes National Park, and the overcast sky and rain deprived us of a close-up look at a glacier.
Our first few days in Reykjavik were sunny and in the high 50s. When the temperature went over 60 degrees one day, Icelanders couldn't stop talking about it.
As I write this, the forecast for Reykjavik in the next nine days includes seven with rain. Temperatures will range from 45 degrees to 48 degrees.
The 40,000-square-mile island is said to have been formed 20 million years ago during a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in the North Atlantic.
Iceland, which declared its independence in 1944, has a population of only 344,000, and welcomes immigration. The largest group of immigrants in recent years comes from Poland.
Today, in addition to seeing active volcanoes, vast fields of petrified lava and black sand beaches, tourists can ride all-terrain vehicles to the top of glaciers.
Gray Line Iceland's all-day Delicious Golden Circle Food Tour on a minibus cost about $250 a person, including three food stops.
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| MOO: At the Efstidalur Farm, we had a dessert of sheep's milk ice cream one level below the restaurant, in a room with windows on a dairy cattle barn. |
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| At the Fridheimar Greenhouse, we enjoyed hors d'oeuvres and two kinds of tomato juice made from hothouse-grown tomatoes. |
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| We also visited Icelandic turf farmhouses, above, and a nearby museum, where we sampled such traditional food as dried cod spread with butter and eaten wrapped in seaweed, and raw lamb pate. |
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| On a second tour, this one of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula northwest of Reykjavik, we stopped for lunch at Snjofell Restaurant in the town of Arnarstapi, where my wife had the Traditional Icelandic Meat Soup, made with lamb ($22), above, and I tucked into a beautiful piece of oven-baked fresh Atlantic Cod served over barley ($34). |
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When hot lava hits the much cooler ocean water, the lava fractures into tiny shards of black glass, which are spread onto beaches by waves.
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| Stefan, an opera singer who lived in Italy for a number of years, was our driver and guide on Gateway to Iceland's all-day tour of Snaefellsnes National Park (about $175 each without food). |
The weather
Icelanders say August is the first of nine months of winter, and when the sun wasn't shining, we encountered drizzle and rain blowing sideways, and temperatures in the 40s.
Umbrellas are useless.
The weather was especially bad during our tour of Snaefellsnes National Park, and the overcast sky and rain deprived us of a close-up look at a glacier.
Our first few days in Reykjavik were sunny and in the high 50s. When the temperature went over 60 degrees one day, Icelanders couldn't stop talking about it.
As I write this, the forecast for Reykjavik in the next nine days includes seven with rain. Temperatures will range from 45 degrees to 48 degrees.
Fish, beer and bread
As you'd expect in a great fishing nation, Reykjavik has some of the greatest seafood restaurants in the world, but Icelanders also love beer and bread.
I ate plenty of all three during our one-week vacation, but put on 6 pounds from the delicious beer and whole-grain bread, weight it took me just over a month to lose.
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LOOKING FOR FISH: Reykjavik Harbor is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.
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| At the harbor, young couples dream of their future. |
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The Sun Voyager sculpture is made of stainless steel. It was added to the harborfront in August 1990.
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We saw "How to Become Icelandic in 60 Minutes," a one-man comedy show in English, in the Harpa Concert Hall overlooking Reykjavik Harbor.
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Hlemmur (the "h" is silent) is a bus station near Fosshotel Reykjavik that has been transformed into a culinary hot spot. The food hall offers homemade soups, open-face sandwiches, tacos, Vietnamese-style banh mi sandwiches, meals of grass-fed meat with wine and beer, and more, above. Below, in a country with hardly any crime, two young Icelandic mothers, right, leave their babies in unattended carriages as they look over a menu at a Hlemmur food stand.
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Straeto or what many refer to as the "yellow bus" is a cheap alternative to taxis in Reykjavik, where a ride of 1 mile or so costs about $20. The fare is a little over $4, half that for seniors. Drivers throw the big buses around as if they are auditioning for a ride in a Formula 1 car.
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Ethnic restaurants in Reykjavik, above, and a statue of Leifur Eiriksson, a gift to Iceland from the United States, below. Eiriksson is a hero in Iceland for being the first European to arrive in America in the year 1000, nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Columbus lived in a fishing village in Iceland for about six months, learning sailing skills that helped him find the New World, one of our guides said.
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HEATED POOLS: On an overcast Sunday, the day before we left Iceland, we took the bus to Laugardalslaug in Reykjavik, a municipal recreation center filled with indoor and outdoor pools, including those heated with geothermal energy from the earth. Admission is about $20, but free for those over 67 years of age. I climbed 50 steps to the top of a spiral staircase and jumped feet first into the water-filled slide, below, an experience that was both hysterically funny and terrifying.
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