We stayed at Hotel Frón which is in the centre of Reykjavik on the main shopping street, Laugavegur. It was excellently located for everything we wanted to do (excursions, food, visiting attractions etc.) and I would recommend it.
It wasn't perfect - the breakfast area used the hotel restaurant which wasn't big enough for all the hotel guests to use at once so breakfast times tended to get a bit crowded. We managed to get a seat every day but on a couple of occasions we did have to wait a while. In fact, on one occasion we were sat with a random French family.
The hotel restaurant was a Mexican restaurant and served good, traditional Mexican food. Though we only ate there once it was always our backup if we couldn't find a place to eat elsewhere and we could have happily ate there more.
Most (if not all) the fittings in the hotel room were from Ikea. I suppose that, in a Scandinavian country it is to be expected! It was the same In Denmark if I remember correctly.
The room was decent. It was okay for sleeping in but you couldn't otherwise relax in there. We had twin beds instead of a double which was a slight nuisance and only one pillow each - though I'm sure if we had asked we would've been given more.
The staff at the hotel were friendly and spoke good English. In fact, that could be said of most of the Icelanders we met. At a lot of hotels in the city you could book excursions from multiple tour operators and, depending on hotel and operator, you got picked up and dropped off at the hotel.
You could also book excursions from the many tourist information centres dotted around the centre but for the sake of simplicity we stuck to the one company - Reykjavik Excursions (RE). I think they were the biggest of the operators and provided the largest language selection for their tours. Though cheaper options existed.
We were pleased with the tours we went on with RE. We went on the customary Golden Circle tour, Landmannalaugar and Saga Valley tour, a trip to the Blue Lagoon and used their Flybus service to and from the airport.
We had planned on going on the Super Jeep tour which would have taken us (as close as was safe) to the latest volcanic action to witness the "devastating" and "ferocious" after-effects first hand. Sadly this got cancelled due to bad weather. Apparently, and I may have mis-overheard someone, you could still hear/feel the glacier settling back after the Eyjafjallajökull eruption.
More on the excursions tomorrow though, right now I want to focus on the journey to and from Iceland and our accommodation.
As I mentioned above, we used the Flybus service (a coach provided by RE) to get between our hotel and the airport. Some people took a taxi, some used other coaches, some rented a car. Either way, if you're flying to Iceland from abroad then you are going to need a way of getting from the international airport in Keflavík to Reykjavik. It's a 40 minute journey by road, when the weather's good!
Keflavík airport was very nice actually. Easy to navigate, not overcrowded. The opposite of Heathrow then - but I suppose this is another thing you have to expect!
We flew with Icelandair who provided us a decent Boeing 757-200 (with Rolls Royce engines) called Hekla. Hekla being one of the most famous volcanoes in Iceland. Coincidentally, we had the exact same plane on the flight back to London as well! I don't think you can say that very often.
Even though we were the lowest of the low (i.e. in economy class) we still got treated okay. We got a complimentary can of pop and if you had your own headphones then you could take advantage of the in-flight entertainment system (a touch screen TV embedded in the backs of the chairs) that provided films, TV shows, music and more. The prices of food (and headphones) weren't that expensive and the food was almost nice!
We used the self-service check-in machine at Keflavík, which was a novel experience. So instead of queuing we just checked in, printed off and attached our luggage tags and boarding card, then went to the queue-free baggage drop desk to have our luggage taken to the plane and that was it! It felt so quick and simple.
Both times I had to go through Security I got angry at the invasion of my civil liberties but at least I didn't have to go through the body scanner thing at Heathrow. You know, that thing that strips you naked so's the security people can check to see whether you're secreting a weapon. Sorry, not a 'traditional' weapon, one of the things that has already been used as a weapon and so a knee-jerk response had been made to ban all items like that.
Sorry, but overly-zealous misdirected airport security really hacks me off and I could rant for hours on how annoyed it makes me but I shall spare you that displeasure and move swiftly on to the journey home.
I decided that we would break up the journey home so as we were only travelling at a 'civilised' time of day. That meant we had an overnight stay in a hotel near Heathrow. Specifically Travelodge Terminal 5 and I would like to say a few things about it.
Firstly we had to get from terminal 1 to terminal 5. There was a free train - the Heathrow Express. It was nice. It looked like a lot of money had been spent on the London to Heathrow link and on terminal 5 itself.
A quick bus ride out to the hotel and then we had self-service check-in. A woman was on hand to help anyone unfamiliar with the technology and if she saw you pausing (if only to read what was on the screen) she would start telling you to "just press next".
Room was nice though. Breakfast was a little disappointing. Plenty of food, and a cooked breakfast after a week of bread and meat was nice but it wasn't good quality food. Filled a hole but nothing special.
And that was it, we were home. On the bus from the coach station (oh yes, we got the coach between Birmingham and Heathrow) back to home I got a bit down. Parts of Brum can only be described as a shit hole - and even then that's just me being polite. But once I got back and had my own creature comforts around me I was happy again after a fantastic holiday.
*****************************
So that's the end of part 2. All that's left to share is the excursions we went on so come back tomorrow for the final instalment!
No comments:
Post a Comment