Know Before You Go: Iceland

Sometimes the best advice I've gotten prior to taking a trip has been the impressions or overall thoughts people have about the country. You can get bogged down in the details, but if you understand the general feel of a country I think this can help you prepare better than almost any list.

So, before you go to Iceland, here are some things I think you should know. If you've already been, how did I do?

1. Holy bejeezus it's expensive. We went to Norway a couple months ago and I remember reading before we left that it was one of the most expensive countries in the world. I beg to differ. It's possible (but I don't think so) that our financial situation has changed enough in three years to the point that I am numb to Scandinavian pricing, but Iceland seemed almost prohibitively expensive and more so than Norway. Our first night in Reykjavik we each got soup in a bread bowl and a beer from a restaurant in the city and I want to say our bill was somewhere around $60 USD. After that I think I gave up on converting ISK to USD because I truly didn't want to know. There are ways to save some money. You could (and should) travel in the off season, buy groceries, eat at gas stations and be flexible in your lodging options. However, it is just an expensive place to live and travel, so keep this in mind.

2. The people are so friendly.

One of our hosts showed us all around his sheep farm and his collection of antique cars. I watched lambs being born as the midnight sun made its way across the Icelandic sky. Better than any tour you could take.

I heard on the radio recently that Iceland was one of the only European countries willing to take in more immigrants and this news does not surprise me at all. The moment we arrived in Reykjavik, our B&B host invited us to go kayaking and swimming with him and his father and spent a good part of his morning sitting and chatting with us over a cup of coffee. Many evenings were spent gathered around the kitchen table with our hosts, sharing Brennivin and dried meat (or coffee in my case), talking about life in Iceland and the US. Of any country we have been to, I would say that we probably felt the most at home in Iceland. People literally open up their lives to you in a way that was touching and completely authentic. The best advice I could give you for visiting Iceland is to make sure you spend some time learning about the people too.

3. The gas stations are incredible. Think Wawa or Sheetz and then turn it up a notch. Not every gas station, but many large ones have full food courts and healthy options. It doesn't have to be all fries and hot dogs unless you want it to (imagine I whispered that to you). One of the first times we ate at one of these large gas stations I felt like Oliver Twist. Jorge basically had me on the starvation diet, because see #1, and I was so ready to have some actual food. This gas station had a large food court with soup and a salad bar and the soup was SO good that I was all EFF IT I'm getting two bowls! I went back up to buy another bowl of soup and the cashier looked at me like I was crazy. I thought he was judging me and was about to go all "Please sir, can I have more?" on him until he told me that its SERVE YOURSELF ALL YOU CAN EAT. Guess what, so was the coffee (usually). If you know me at all, you know that never ending soup and coffee is like the ticket to my happiness so I will never say a bad thing about Icelandic gas station food courts.

4. The weather is all over the map. So this is a little bit dependent on how far you're traveling around the country, but we went from driving through snow tunnels to hiking in t-shirts. There are times I was sweating in a long sleeve shirt and times I had to layer every piece of clothing I had with me in order not to freeze. Definitely keep this in mind when you pack and think about layers.

5. There are Icelandic horses everywhere. 

Oh they are so KEWT. Even, maybe especially, when they are blocking your car.

The Icelandic horse is a really interesting breed. As settlers arrived in Iceland over time, they selected the strongest and fittest horses from their respective countries to survive the shipment and transition to Iceland's extreme environment. Since the 10th century there has been a ban on the importation of other horses and as a result the current Icelandic horse is a product of natural selection for the strongest and hardiest of their kind. They have a distinctive gait and there are specific breed shows and classes only for Icelandic horses. Although you cannot import other horses (aside from certain situations) into Iceland, the Icelandic horse is valued the world over, and many are exported for both pleasure and show. At this point, I fully realize that I need to slow my roll but I love horses and could wax poetic on them for awhile. Ok, just one more thing. My horse, King Dante would straight up die if he had to spent one single night in the unsheltered Iceland weather.

This is me braiding his hair, in case you wondered what level of service he is accustomed to.

6. There may be long stretches between gas stations. Especially if you travel further into Iceland's westfjords, civilization will peter out, and with it - the availability of gas stations. Sometimes there may only be an unmanned pump with instructions mostly in Icelandic for several hundred kilometers. If you want to see how strong your marriage REALLY is, try to decipher one of those pumps when your tank is a quarter full. Especially if you are traveling in the more remote areas, be sure to fill up your tank when you can and here is a map of gas stations with prices.

7. You might consider additional car rental insurance.

When we landed in Iceland, we decided to decline CDW coverage and use our credit card coverage in order to save a little money because #1. The rental agent told us about additional sand and ash coverage and recommended we get it since we would be traveling all around the country and it was for protection from sand and ash damage from winds that are particularly prevalent in the south. We decided to be safe and went ahead and purchased it, with the thought that we were probably just dumb tourists who had been suckered in. We (luckily) never needed it, but we didn't feel so dumb when our glacier guide told us that earlier that year, a whole fleet of cars in the parking lot had their sides stripped when a particularly nasty wind storm sprung up out of nowhere. If you're only planning on kicking around Reykjavik for a couple days you probably don't need it, but if you are doing a fairly extensive route and spending a good amount of time in the south and southeast, then I would certainly spring for it. Comparatively speaking, it won't be your biggest expense in Iceland.

8. Don't relieve yourself wherever you feel like it. This sounds like a strange thing to know, but before I went to Iceland I remember reading a lot of comments from other tourists that said things like "Don't be afraid to commune with nature and do what you gotta do!" OR "I probably peed all over the entirety of the country and bring toilet paper because you might have to do more than just pee LOL"

what.

Look, I get it. I'll pop a squat with the best of them if I have to but uhhhh...you don't really have to? There are PLENTY of clean, public restrooms all along the ring road as well as rest stations with picnic tables, trash facilities, etc. I can only imagine that in the three years since I've gone it's gotten even better. So, uh, maybe don't defecate all over this beautiful country if you don't have to?

9. Some of the most beautiful spots are off the beaten track. We did not have a 4 wheel drive car when we went to Iceland and unless you're really planning on trekking around the interior, you don't need it. But, you can get to some of the most beautiful spots by trying a random (NOT F) road or even by putting on a pair of hiking boots and poking around.

Here are a couple random shots from little jaunts we did that I don't have a name for and didn't have a sign directing you here. Take some time to find your own.