Any advice? 2020 was a bust for our post-retirement world travels, got a feeling 21 is gonna be a good year. Well...better.

https://thepointsguy.com/news/...d-travel-to-iceland/

We're too old for a "swim with the whales" adventure, we'd be happy to stay at a Rejkavik hotel and join all day tours out to the scenery. We're looking at June or August.

Has anyone been there?

Dont know much about Iceland, but I'd put the "See the Northern Lights" at the top of my list.

I know there's some hot springs that are supposed to be pretty cool, there's glaciers and some nice hiking. Outside of that, I'm out of Ideas. Unless you want to go poking a polar bear...

Would like a trip report when you’re back. I’d like to go there although I’m watching Trapped which makes it look less than hospitable.

I have traveled around Iceland 4 times, mostly overlanding and fly-fishing remote rivers. It is staggeringly beautiful. Go in the summer for relatively decent weather. It has become very expensive. Feel free to email me for more info.

PS the Blue Lagoon is a tourist trap.

I went a few years ago in November. Our main goal was to see the Northern Lights. I found most of the things geared towards tourism to be underwhelming and overpriced. Everything is very expensive, especially the restaurants. A burger was the equivalent of $35-45 USD. It can be cheap to get there but everything else is $$$.

The people were very nice and the countryside beautiful. My advice would be to rent a car and explore on your own. Avoid the tours.

I have been fortunate to go to many places and Iceland was my least favorite. I know other people who love it. One last item for your consideration: you can book a trip to Europe on Iceland Air with up to a 3 day layover in Reykjavik at no additional cost. We had considered doing that previously on one of our trips to Scotland.

Hoping to get there someday but for now the advice in Iceland is to be careful with the earthquakes (about 50,000 small ones) and the volcano eruption on the peninsula southwest of Reykjavik. With all those people out there watching it and roasting hot dogs on the lava flows, someone might get hurt.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...nd-volcano-eruption/

Iceland is insanely beautiful.

Went a few years ago. It's expensive but you can do it on a budget if you're smart.

We did a package and it included one bus tour(i don't normally do bus tours) with a visit to a hot spring and then a place to see the northern lights(it rained that night).

We also rented a car and I would recommend anyone going to rent one. The best part of the trip was getting out and seeing the sights on our own. We stayed in the city and did day trips every day. Worked out well since we were there for only 4 days. If I did it again I would go for a full week or more and stay in different areas.

One tip if you're going to get out on your own which you should make sure you have service for your cell phones. You can get sim cards or what we did was rent a hot spot with the car. Back then it was under $10 a day and gave us internet almost everywhere. In the car, we could connect both cell phones to it and use mapping programs and anything else we needed. It was very helpful.

was there for a stopover, so not particularly helpful, but the shark and the liquor they serve with it were interesting. I think it is one of the few things Bourdain struggled with. would love to go back to see the sights.

Hopefully the OP caught the "expensive" part.

Iceland is on my short-list of travel destinations to hit once things calm down.

Many friends have been, especially when Wow and Iclandic Air was running their stop-over deals, not sure if that's still available. Fantastically expensive, with a healthy amount of tourist traps to sucker you in; Blue Lagoon is the most popular lagoon but, not the only lagoon. Alcohol my understanding is best purchased at a store, and avoid bars if possible as you'll be paying through the nose.

Grab yourself a Rick Steves Guidebook and watch the video

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
Hopefully the OP caught the "expensive" part.

He did, thank you. 2020 was a bust, we did not make it to Moscow or the Galapagos Islands and did not spend the big bucks as planned. Our only international travel was to the Conch Republic.

Iceland is not on the top of our bucket list, but it appears to be ahead of other countries in welcoming people like us who've gotten their covid shots.

My wife and I got there on a MAC flight after I retired from the Army and spent several weeks there. That was 30+ years ago, though, and therefore I’m sure almost everything other than the scenery itself has changed. It was expensive then (although not $40 for a burger expensive! ) but we kept costs down by limiting eating in restaurants and camping mostly. At the time it was possible to rent floor space for a sleeping pad and bag in any of the many boarding schools scattered around the country.

We did rent a car, which I would consider a must for any real exploration, but we also used a tour service that took us by “all terrain” bus into the interior of the country via routes that were impassible for cars (in fording one river the water was lapping at the top step of the bus entrance). The tour was camping with tents provided and the passengers’ contributing to the cooking and clean up. There were many Islandic natives along, and by volunteering for the less-popular chores I got a discreet invitation to sample some locally distilled product one evening.

My wife and I like wild, rugged scenery and enjoyed that aspect of the trip along with the wildlife, primarily birds. I understand that many of the natives are not happy with how popular it’s become with the tourists, but at the time most of them were very friendly and helpful. Cars had to be driven with the headlights on, and one time of course I parked for a time without turning them off, and I got an immediate jump from someone in the same lot and who had an “of course” set of cables. English was commonly spoken, and one evening we got an invitation to the home of the parents of a woman physician who had been a resident at an ER in Cook County, Illinois.

It would be very interesting to know what it’s like now.