General Thoughts:
We were pretty much toast. It was a cold and rainy morning. Our endurance for this kind of travel is 5-6 days, and here we are. We packed up, ate breakfast, and checked out of the hotel. It was 1000, we had the car until 1530, and it was only an hour and a half to the airport, so we figured we’d do some sightseeing.
Selfoss is building a little tourist trap/shopping area opposite the busiest traffic circle I’ve seen in Iceland. It’s a small, walkable area leaning towards high-end shops and galleries. No, thanks on that whale tail statue for 39.990 Kr. ($300). We ducked into a bookstore/toy store/art supply store to look around. We bought a book or two and headed for the car.
Itinerary: (100 km, 1:26 hr.)
- Hotel South Coast (Selfoss)
- Reykjavik
- Keflavik
Route:
First Leg: Selfoss to Reykjavik (57 km, 0:50 hr.)
From Selfoss to Reykjavik, the drive becomes increasingly easier. The road becomes a four-lane divided highway on par with US Interstates (complete with construction zones). The road takes you into the commercial/industrial south side of Reykjavik. Not the most scenic views, but familiar views, even if we couldn’t read the signs. One sign we could read was “Costco”. Yes, we stopped, we had plenty of time after all. Jess is a bit of a nut about Costco, we spent an hour in the Vancouver, BC Costco when we had time to kill before the shuttle to our cruise ship.
That one was quite similar to the ones here, except the prices were higher (Canadian Dollars being what they are). The Reykjavik store was much the same. This side quest was to find all the stuff they sell here that we don’t get in Maryland. About 85% is the same stuff, the rest is sourced locally or from Europe. Long on fish products and other inscrutable items that weren’t obvious what it was, and the labels were in Icelandic. See the photo gallery for examples.
Yeah, I had to try the pylsa (hot dog). Icelanders are into hot dogs in a big way, but it turns out that Costco serves the same hot dog in Reykjavik as they do here. Which was what I expected and was completely acceptable, other than they don’t do mustard there…
Second Leg : Reykjavik to Keflavik (43 km, 0:36 hr.)
Having done all we could at Costco, I wanted to head to the airport. There was still plenty of time, but I had heard horror stories about rental car returns, so I wanted plenty of time to deal with any issues.
The first issue is charging. We needed to return it at 80% or close to it. The car told us there was a Tesla supercharger point near the rental car lot (shocking, right?) so we headed there. This was the first time a Tesla-branded station had been convenient for us to use, and we learned that we should have made more of an effort to use them. First of all, as soon as we plugged the cable in, the “pump” recognized the car and was happy to start charging immediately. No app, no fuss, no payment. .This was the no hassle experience we’d heard about and had expected all along. Lesson learned.
Charged up, we headed over to the return lot and dropped off the car. The process was cursory and painless. Huh, don’t believe everything you read on Reddit. Now, I am sure those folks had the problems they described, but only people who had difficulties are going to post. Also, I took every kind of insurance offered.
This is a scam. Pay it anyway. In the US, the CDWs are unnecessary if you have a normal car insurance policy. In Iceland, they are extra picky about the state of the car, which, combined with the harsh weather, gives them ample room to overcharge you for things like windshield dings from rocks, being sandblasted by the really high winds, loss of revenue for the days the car is waiting to be repaired (something you don’t see (yet) in the US), etc. So in addition to the CDW with it’s $500 deductible, they offer this secondary policy that covers that $500 and all the other minor shit the main policy doesn’t.
When a replacement windshield costs $2000, that extra $20 a day extra insurance is a bargain. And, let’s face it, you spent thousands of dollars getting to and enjoying Iceland, spend it. Yes, they are counting on that too. Think of it as a tip for being awesome.
To their credit, they offered a van ride to the terminal even though is was less than a kilometer if you walked straight through the lots. But we took it anyway, we were tired and just wanted to get home.
Keflavik and the Flight Home
Keflavik is the home base for IcelandAir, the only major airline in Iceland. Other companies service Iceland, but 95% of the traffic is IcelandAir. They are a good company in my limited experience, and having the airport being basically a one airline airport had advantages for connecting flights and such. They know where you are and will hold the plane. They are positioning themselves as a hub where they collect passengers from the US East Coast, bring them to Reykjavik, and then sort them out to European destinations. It’s all about making the most of their location.
However, they are struggling to expand the terminal fast enough to keep pace with the growth of the business. Like in the US, it seems that airport construction is incredibly slow. The outbound flights are where this is most evident. You are most likely going to be bused from the terminal to the plane out of the tarmac. They don’t have enough gates and they prefer using them on incoming flights to make deplaning faster to facilitate connecting flights. It’s not terrible, just weird.
The US routes are all served by 737-800 MAXs, reasonably modern and exactly the type of aircraft. American Airlines flies all over the place including to Dallas for my work trips there. Flight time back to BWI is just under six hours, about 30 min slower than coming.
Importantly, the homeward route crosses a good chunk of Greenland. The eastbound route just clips the tip. In either direction, you rarely see it, though. Eastbound, we’re on the red-eye flight, and it’s dark. Westbound, that ice cap creates its own weather, and it’s often cloudy. This homeward trip is the first time I’ve actually gotten to see Greenland.
Iceland is amazing, but it’s on a cozy, easy to handle scale. It has a lot of rivers, but they are short and shallow. It has glaciers, but not that big. It has rough back country, but the whole island is smaller than the state of Maine. It’s beautiful in a rugged sort of way. But it’s approachable for the casual outdoorsy types. It’s definitely a different place, but you can handle it.
Greenland is like another planet. It’s a vast, mountainous wilderness where most of what you can see from 12000m is someplace no human has ever tread. The ice planets that most sci-fi writers describe aren’t even a Disney version of Greenland. They need to fly over this a couple of times and then do their worldbuilding.
I’m slightly obsessed with the place. I want to go there and experience the things you see in Iceland on a much larger scale. There are fewer people in the whole country than in the town I live in. There are no roads to anywhere; the island has a total of 75 miles of road. Yes, it’s chilly, but summer isn’t too bad. I frequently look at the ads for photo trips to Greenland. Jess has no interest; it’s almost a catalog of things she doesn’t like. Cold, no restaurants, no Internet. I can leave her in Reykjavik; most of these trips start there anyway. One day…
The 1530 flight home arrives at 1930 local time, so that’s nice, it’s still light out, we can find the car and get home at a reasonable hour. It’s Wednesday, but I took the whole week off so I would have a couple of days off before I had to go back to work. There’s nothing more jarring than coming back from a nice vacation and then having to work the next day, only to have the glow wear off in hours.