Three Weeks in Iceland

This is the summary and index of all the posts from our 21-day trip to Iceland, from which we just returned.

Why have I been sitting here between 0230 and 0500 at my computer surrounded by a dark, silent house while Ann sleeps upstairs? Simply put, my body thinks that it is late morning despite being up for 24 straight hours yesterday with four hours of sleep since I went to bed. Sleep will come, but while my mind is racing, I might as well reboot the computer, install the inevitable OS updates, and unload the photos from my cell phone and two cameras, some 2500 strong.

More sleep did come, but only a scant hour. Despite this, how wonderful was that first cup of American coffee with Ann, the first real semblance of getting back into the rhythm of our day-to-day lives? We missed our morning pot while we were overseas. Iceland does have coffee, but coffee shops open at our accustomed hours (that is, first thing in the morning when a body needs a jumpstart) are scarce except in the tourist center of downtown Reykjavík. Outside of the capital and even outside of downtown, many coffee shops, if a tiny town has one, open in late morning long after a tourist wants to be on the road.

Drip coffee is more prevalent than in Europe, but most coffee is Iceland is espresso-based. I do not mind an Americano and that is my standard order in Europe, but there is really something comforting about a big mug of American drip coffee. Apparently, Europeans do not find this a thing and wonder about silly Americans. We like what we like, n'est-ce pas?

Coffee in Iceland is Mostly Espresso-Based

Post-coffee, the first order of business was to make a provisioning run to restock our bare refrigerator. Unlike getting into the rental car for the past few weeks, I enjoyed not having to fold myself into a pretzel as I climbed into my ludicrously large-seeming full-sized pickup truck. Habits die hard, though, causing me to push the non-existent clutch pedal to the floor, on autopilot after three weeks of driving a manual transmission in a small European-sized car.

On the way to the grocery store, I noticed that things have changed while we were away. If I believe the headlines in the news on the truck radio, the political divide actually worsened while we were away. I did not think things could get worse, but I have returned after three blissful weeks of not hearing about all things Washington D.C. to find that things are palpably worse. Incredible.

As I drove, I noted too that Central Oregon has changed. In the distance, the Cascade peaks have lost any semblance of the residual snow cover that they sported before we left. Closer at hand, the glory of September, the golden blooms of the rabbitbrush are amazingly brilliant where they were not really open before we flew to Iceland.

At the grocery store, I noted that its produce section is larger than any single store that we visited in Iceland. And, we have a bounty of fresh produce, something that is extremely scarce in Iceland.

While the political situation makes me despair to be back from our once-in-a lifetime sojourn, the produce, rabbitbrush, and American coffee provide solace. It is indeed good to be home.

A Once-in-a-Lifetime Trip

Ann and I had long discussed visiting Iceland, and that trip moved quickly to the top of our bucket list in recent years. Why it rose faster than other destinations, I cannot really pinpoint except perhaps because Iceland seems so otherworldly in photos posted around the internet. Iceland appears to be one of the most austerely beautiful yet easily accessible places on earth. In addition, many acquaintances have visited and raved about Iceland.

Oregon is similar to Iceland in many respects. Volcanism, lava flows, hot springs, whales, seals, and puffins, things that people hope to see in Iceland, are all found in Oregon. We also witness the aurora borealis from time to time in Oregon.

Iceland: Land of Lava

Aside from these commonalities, Iceland and Oregon differ in many ways. Iceland is much more raw and rugged, much more remote, and much more alien than Central Oregon. One of the vast differences is water. I read somewhere, “finding waterfalls in Iceland is like finding pigeons in New York City.” Coming from the arid high desert, so many rivers and so many waterfalls are truly alien. Moreover, most of our precipitation falls in the winter as snow; we are not used to rain and it rains (deluges, as we discovered) often in Iceland.

So Many Waterfalls, So Little Time

We are used to trees here too, both stately Ponderosa Pines of the eastern slopes of the Cascades and shaggy Western Junipers of the high desert. Truly, thanks to Norse settlers cutting the trees centuries ago, Iceland is a country without trees, despite recent pushes to plant more. The fabulous and austere landscapes stretch to the horizon as a result. Oregon does not have these vast expanses and vistas.

Treeless Vistas to the Horizon

Some people, especially those of the influencer generations, travel to Iceland to see “attractions.” We have no need to churn out photos and videos of ourselves at these attractions to feed our legions of social media followers. We dislike crowds and tour buses. By way of example, we visited Yellowstone and skipped Old Faithful because of crowds, preferring to seek out elk, bison, and large predators in the less popular parts of the park. In Iceland, visiting the intensely touristy Golden Circle, beautiful as it may be, is not a goal but we will travel through it as a means to get from the South Coast back to the capital.

For us, a trip to Iceland is a chance to explore the desolate and harsh places that we find attractive and to meet the people who inhabit those places while learning about their culture. Finding solitude in Iceland once off the ring road was easy. Conversing with locals would prove harder. Like many northern cultures, Icelanders choose to keep to their own business; engaging with strangers is not in their nature for the most part. Americans with their generally exuberant and outgoing natures are the exception, not the rule.

The vast majority of people we came in contact with were either tourists like us or non-native Europeans in service industry jobs. And as Ann and I are all too aware from living in a tourist town, during tourist season, we do not frequent tourist sights. In this regard, Icelanders are no different than us. When we got off the beaten path, such as climbing a desolate mountain, we did meet and briefly chat with locals.

We planned to visit as much of the country as we could reasonably visit in a three-week timeframe, while keeping our daily car time to a minimum. Experience shows three weeks is the maximum time we can tolerate being away from home and out of our quotidian rhythms. Three weeks also seems like a decent start at exploring Iceland. However, I am certain we could return every year for a decade and still not see all that there is to see, even in a country so small it occupies merely 40% of the area of Oregon.

Planning such a trip was not simple. Ann usually handles much of the planning, but Iceland confounded her and she left the planning to me. Often, I had to walk away because it seemed so overwhelming. I did not know where to start or have any reasonable feel for driving times between stops. Moreover, parsing and pronouncing the Icelandic language, or at least the place names, seemed almost insurmountable in the beginning.

With persistence, I came to understand the geography and regions of Iceland. As I studied, I found tackling Icelandic words easier. My experience with languages helped. I first noticed in place names that Icelandic, like German, loves to glue root words into new words. Eyjafjallajökull is a perfect example: "eyja" (island), "fjalla" (mountain), and "jökull" (glacier).

Eyjafjallajökull

That English derives in part from Old Norse as did Icelandic also helps. Old Norse was the tongue of the occupying Nordic settlers of the north of England, the Danelaw, from about 900AD to the Norman Conquest in 1066. So, the letters eth (ð) and thorn (þ) come as no surprise to anyone who struggled through a few lines of the Old English epic poem Beowulf. Interestingly, thorn still survives in English in the phrase “Ye olde.” Printers had no þ character, so they first substituted Y and later Th.

Recognizing words is one thing. Pronouncing Icelandic, however, is entirely more difficult than parsing place names. I imagine many people feel the same about English pronunciation or at least its infuriatingly inconsistent pronunciation (try viscous, visceral, and viscount). At least Icelandic pronunciation is generally consistent, even if I struggle with it.

Starting the first of March and despite struggling with comprehending place names, I spent 3-1/2 weeks mapping out a clockwise tour of the country so that we could book rooms as needed. The slightly less daunting task of identifying key sites to visit between nightly stops was incomplete at this point. That would come over weeks of daily study.

Clockwise Nightly Stops: One Night in Blue, Two Nights in Red
Reykjavík, Grundarfjörður, Tálknafjörður, Ísafjörður, Hvammstangi,
Siglufjörður, Húsavík, Seyðisfjörður, near Höfn, near Vík,
Vestmannaeyjabær, Tungufell, and Reykjavík

The trip spanned 21 days in Iceland, with part of the first and last day given over to air travel. During that span, we built in days with zero itinerary, a lesson learned from prior trips and long distance backpacking. The second day (our first full day) and our next to last day (our last full day), we left empty to recover from jet lag and from being on the road for three weeks respectively, both days spent in Reykjavík. We also built in two-night stays in seven locations around the country to give us flexibility to rest or to work around bad weather.

As I made lists of places to visit, it occurred to me to create a custom Google map (see below) and plot the sites from my lists on the map. This helped immensely in visualizing the trip, especially in identifying those points of interest that were significantly off our route. To such stops, I would come to apply the Guide Michelin rubric of “vaut le détour” or “worth the detour” in English. An out-of-the-way stop would need to offer serious bang for the buck to make it onto our pre-trip itinerary.

Tálknafjörður, Worth the Detour

I never put together a static itinerary for each day because I dislike over-planned days. Rather I created lists of potential things to do each day, making sure to leave room in the schedule for serendipity and more importantly, the weather. Some of our best experiences have been unplanned and unexpected, the result of stumbling blindly on an opportunity or of following the advice of a kind stranger, another reason for meeting and conversing with locals.

Early on, we chose to visit the final week of August through mid-September. Kids would be back in school and the quantities of tourists would be smaller while the weather would still be decent, we hoped. Living in a tourist town, we are painfully aware of both the financial benefits of tourism and the accompanying clogged streets and tourist sights. We have come to appreciate the shoulder seasons. Moreover we are painfully aware that as tourists to Iceland ourselves, we are hypocritically part of the problem we seek to avoid.

Rough itinerary and duration of the trip set, we booked flights, airport shuttles, and a rental car during the final week of March. During the first three weeks of April and five months in advance of our departure, we booked lodging without much difficulty except in Höfn and Vík proper. Both towns in southern Iceland are on the main tourist route.

In April, there were still rooms in both towns available for September, but prices were between $500 and $1000 per night. Lodging, like many things, is extraordinarily expensive in Iceland. We chose outside of town at significantly better prices. In Höfn, we booked about six minutes outside of downtown, while we booked 40 minutes east of Vík out in the country. While they were not the most convenient locations, they proved to be two of our favorite rooms and settings, both calm and comforting.

In the months between booking and traveling, only two things needed rebooking. Our host in the Westman Islands canceled our booking and the ferry company rebooked our ferry tickets to and from those islands because the larger ferry we booked would be in dry dock during our trip.

Now with the preamble over, on to the story of the trip.

Iceland Step by Step

The interactive map below shows our clockwise route around the country and highlights the stops we made. We chose clockwise on the advice of friends. Along the steep cliffs and fjords, this would put our vehicle in the inside lane away from the edge which often had no shoulder and no guardrail. It was a sage piece of advice.

Each of the following posts describes roughly a day of our trip. A couple of days required two posts because I took too many pictures for a single post. In these posts, I frequently use redundant English names to help readers. For example, I write Snæfellsnes Peninsula when nes means peninsula, Lake Mývatn when vatn means lake, Jökulsárlón Lagoon when árlón means lagoon, and so forth.

Days 0, 1, and 2 – Monday-Wednesday, August 25-27, Reykjavík
Day 3 – Thursday August 28, Snæfellsnes Peninsula Day 1
Day 4 – Friday August 29, Snæfellsnes Peninsula Day 2
Day 5 – Saturday August 30, Westfjords, Tálknafjörður
Day 6 – Sunday August 31 Westfjords, Ísafjörður Day 1
Day 7 – Monday September 1, Westfjords, Ísafjörður Day 2
Day 8 – Tuesday September 2, Hvammstangi
Day 9 – Wednesday September 3, Siglufjörður
Day 10 – Thursday September 4, Húsavík Day 1
Day 11 – Friday September 5, Húsavík Day 2
Day 12 – Saturday September 6,  Seyðisfjörður
Day 13 – Sunday September 7, Höfn Day 1
Day 14 – Monday September 8, Höfn Day 2
Day 15 – Tuesday September 9, Somewhere East of Vík Day 1
Day 16 – Wednesday September 10, Somewhere East of Vík Day 2
Day 17 – Thursday September 11, Westman Islands

Day 18 – Friday September 12, Heimaey and Vestmannaeyjabær
Day 18 – Friday September 12, Tungufell
Day 19 – Saturday September 13, Golden Circle

Day 19 – Saturday September 13, Reykjavík

Day 20 – Sunday September 14, Free Day in Reykjavík
Day 21 – Monday September 15, Flying Home

On the whole, this trip to Iceland was incredible. The amount of rain and wind was incredible. The scenery, the geology, and the fjords were incredible. The prices were incredible. I do not know that we will ever have the opportunity to go back or the desire, given that there are so many other places that we would like to see. We both agree that were we to return, we would like to spend a week in the Westfjords and a week in the Eastfjords exploring the far reaches of both the northeast and the northwest. We never have to spend time in the south again.

Takeaways From Our Trip

Weather. During our trip, mostly in the first half of September, the temperatures were moderate and barely changed, moving mostly in a range of 9-11C (48-52F) each day. The lowest was 6C/43F and the highest was 14C/57F. Compare this to Central Oregon with its diurnal swing of 30-40F degrees this time of year. It may be chilly in the morning but it is likely to be warm in the afternoon. It rained on 19 of our 21 days, including about four days straight. The almost constant cloud cover negated any chance at seeing an aurora, though they were visible both before and after we visited.

Good Raingear is Necessary

Much of the rain is like that in the Willamette Valley, a misty light rain that is merely annoying. But, when a storm rolls in off the ocean, it rains hard often accompanied by wind that will knock you on your butt. Iceland has incredible wind that most Americans cannot comprehend. From the safety of my office prior to the trip, I wondered how bad the wind really would be. We had days when it wanted to wrench the car doors off their hinges. We had days where it blew 30 mph all day and night. We had hurricane-force gusts of 30 m/s (67 mph) in Höfn.

Moreover, most days the weather is dynamic. It can be sunny, windy, cloudy, calm, rainy, sleeting, and snowing all in the course of an hour. There is no good way to battle this kind of weather. The sane approach is to, as we would say over and over, "embrace the suck" and make the most of the sunshine. Making light of the rain, I called it Icelandic sunshine. Iceland brings to life the old adage: "there is no bad weather, only bad clothing choices."

Clothing. As for packing for a three-week trip to Iceland, I researched what others had packed. Many packing lists were overkill. Every packing list suggested hiking boots, puffy down jacket, thermal pants, and other things that do not make sense to me. I was content with my waterproof trail runners, long-sleeve Merino shirt, hooded sun shirt, thin fleece pullover, rain shell, thin hiking pants (OR Ferrosi), rain pants, and waterproof baseball cap. In addition, I brought my cold weather bag containing a thin Merino beanie, thin Merino gloves, and a synthetic neck gaiter/buff. I wanted nothing else.

This is exactly the gear that I would take on an extended 3-season (that is, not during winter) backpacking trip, except for the waterproof trail runners. When backpacking in extended rain, shoes are going to get wet and waterproof shoes do not dry out easily or well. But for Iceland's driving rain and occasional creek ford, I was really happy to have the waterproof shoes along.

Although the weather was never cold, the cold weather gear came in handy on a couple of supremely windy and rainy days, including our whale watching trip in the north. When the wind blows in Iceland, it hardly matters what the thermostat reads; it is going to be chilly. The wind was fierce at times, but my time-proven layering system was up to the challenge.

We saw so many tourists from all over wearing brand new outdoor gear, many wearing snow gear in August and early September. I imagine they were sweaty inside all that heavy gear and I imagine their feet were killing them in their brand new unbroken-in boots.

At several of the more touristy stops, we saw scores of people, mostly Chinese on bus tours, wearing cheap-ass rain ponchos which are not going to get the job done. The wind blowing the rain sideways will destroy them in minutes. A first-rate rain shell and pants are a must. I prefer Marmot Precip for cost, light weight, and ability to act as an outer wind layer.

Payment. Iceland is almost cashless, even more so than America where I have not carried cash in over a decade. Credit cards and touchless payment (Apple Pay etc.) are accepted almost universally, even in the remotest locations. In Iceland like most of Europe, servers taking credit cards from the table out of sight of customers, unlike the ubiquitous practice in America, is not a thing. When you finish your meal, you walk to the counter to pay. Tipping is not a thing in Iceland.

The only credit card issue we had was with gas pumps at N1 stations in remote areas. These older machines require a PIN with the credit card and American credit cards do not have PINs. Some banks will issue PINs on request, but these are mainly for cash advances and many are not recognized in Europe. We avoided the issue by selecting Orkan or Olís stations that accepted Apple Pay.

Communication. English is the lingua franca of Iceland. Many of the people in the service industry are from Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic etc.) and speak zero Icelandic. We witnessed a Polish clerk at the Bónus in Keflavík ask an Icelandic customer to repeat his request in English so she could understand. It must be frustrating to be in your own country and not be understood in your own language, but I suppose that is no different to being in Spanish-speaking areas of America along the southern border. Or on any construction site, really. In any case, English instruction is mandatory in Icelandic schools and many Icelanders that we encountered speak better English than many Americans.

Internet. Iceland is a country that is blessed with great Internet connectivity. Only in a few highly remote locations were we without an Internet connection and only then for just a few minutes. Our rental car came with a Huawei mobile Wi-Fi device that worked like a charm. Once we connected to it, we never needed to join another Wi-Fi network. It went with us everywhere in my pocket.

Waterfalls. Ann says, “You can’t swing a dead cat in Iceland without hitting a waterfall.” Our favorite waterfalls were often not the name attractions, but those that we stumbled upon on the side of the road. Locals say the waterfalls were not as impressive this year because of little snowpack from last winter, but coming from the high desert, any waterfall is impressive.

Waterfall fatigue in Iceland is real, especially if you go out of your way to see nearly every one that you encounter. By the end of your trip, you will be saying, "Not another damn foss!" There is no need to sweat not seeing any particular falls, merely because there will be five others to see in the next hour. That said, some waterfalls should not be bypassed. My top five are Fossálar Falls near Kirkjubæjarklaustur in the south, Brúarfoss on the Golden Circle, Dynjandi in the Westfjords, Gullfoss on the Golden Circle, and Kolufossar Falls in Kolugljúfur Canyon in the north.

Fossálar Falls

Tourists. Before I start in on tourists, I acknowledge that we, Ann and I, are hypocrites and part of the problem as we criticize other tourists. We also live in a town that depends on tourism as its primary industry; without tourism, our town would die.

The tourists we met were not all Americans as I had supposed. We met or encountered people from everywhere: all over Europe, Asia, Australia, America, Canada. I was really surprised at all the Aussies and Chinese that we met who traveled terribly long distances to get to Iceland. Europe is a hop, skip, and a jump; America is farther; but Australasia is a long, long way to come.

Tourists can be a net add or a net takeaway. Most are a net add, behaving sensibly and enjoying the beauty of Iceland. However, a small portion are a net loss and it it only took one day away from Reykjavík to witness idiot tourists doing the full gamut of idiot things that make natives hate them: cars stopped dead in the middle of the 90 kph highway checking directions on phone; flying drones in locations clearly posted “no drones;” walking on beaches, back to the sea, not watching for sneaker waves; and walking beyond the barriers on sheer cliffs posing for moments of social media fame.

Driving. I am extremely happy to have spent the extra money to rent a 4x4 for this trip. Besides being an easy handling car, our Dacia Duster came in clutch on the wicked dirt roads of the Westfjords. The beefed up suspension was key. An extremely common rental car in Iceland, the white Duster is something of a cliché and a certain indicator of a tourist driver. It is so common that in crowded parking lots at busy tour sights, ours was one of many and Ann opened the door to the wrong one at Látrabarg only to find a stranger already inside.

We did have a fuel system problem, a clogged fuel filter and/or fuel injector, but while the warnings were obnoxious, we did find a way to clear the problem though it would recur daily. Despite this, the Dacia Duster was way nicer and easier to drive than the Jeep Renegade we had in Italy last year. It handled everything I asked of it including some beat-ass dirt roads, creek fords, and some super steep and tight dirt switchbacks.

The diesel engine has plenty of horsepower and great torque in the low end, a decently adjusted clutch, and the six-speed manual transmission is easy to shift. The Duster is not a serious off-road vehicle, but just what I wanted, a vehicle with enough suspension to take on washboard dirt roads at decent speeds, such as 70-80 kph. I would call it a workhorse and I would rent one again.

Driving in Iceland was easy especially compared to Italy. My take is that the Nordic sense of order prevails in Iceland. Roads and signage are predictable, speed limits are predictable, and drivers are in less of a hurry. Iceland is a much younger country with a lot of space for roads, so most of the time, it did not feel like we were driving on goat paths as it did in much of Italy. In Italy with its Latin passion, many Italian drivers drove like madmen, the antithesis of the largely well-behaved Icelandic drivers.

Several things made driving in Iceland fun for me. Iceland has few traffic lights that are limited to the two largest cities of Reykjavík and Akureyri. Elsewhere, roundabouts prevail. Likewise, I saw only a handful of stop signs. Most intersections were posted with yield signs and entering even the ring road was a third-gear affair most of the time. With as little traffic as Iceland has, stopping is rarely necessary.

A Rare Traffic Signal in Akureyri

Moreover, I loved the consistent speed limits nationwide that were almost always entirely predictable: 90 on the highway, 80 on gravel, 70 on the outskirts of town, and 50 in town unless otherwise posted. The country has countless radar signs to let you know if you are going too fast; many will flash a smiley face at you or a frowny face depending on your speed. Speed cameras exist, but are few and far between and warning signs are posted a couple hundred meters in advance.

The roads in Iceland are a mix of pavement and gravel. The Hringvegur, the national ring road, is mostly all paved, but sections were gravel when we visited. The incredible weather often causes washouts and so the roads are perpetually under repair. Construction is common and construction zones are not the well-regulated things that they are in America. There is little signage, little guidance about lanes, cars on the road at the same time as bulldozers and heavy equipment, and no pilot vehicles that I ever saw. I like the approach that assumes that you are an adult with intact faculties, that you will slow down, and you will proceed with caution.

Also, I need to shout out to the highway construction crews in Iceland. They are without a doubt some can-do people. We saw them out working at all hours in all weather on all days of the week knocking out projects left and right that Americans would have to study for months before undertaking. The intense weather and the short summer do not give Icelanders the luxury of time.

Off the ring road, many of the secondary roads are gravel. Many were in decent shape but others, having been last graded after snowmelt, were showing signs of use by September. Washboard is less common than I thought it would be, but it is an issue and having a beefed-up suspension helps. Also, driving faster, counterintuitive for many people, helps the vehicle float over the washboards and smooths out the ride.

Thanks to raging floodwater that is prone to destroy roads and infrastructure and because of the tiny amount of traffic in Iceland, many bridges are one-lane. Why build a two-lane bridge if the spring floods are going to wipe it out anyway? I overheard several Americans having heartburn with one-lane bridges, but really, are they that hard to navigate? The car on the bridge has the right of way. And if 3-4 cars are in line waiting, when their turn comes, they all go. I grew up in a rural area where several bridges were one-lane and crossing them was something that came naturally.

One-lane tunnels, on the other had, are not something I or anyone I know has had experience with, although they really are no different than navigating single-track out in the wilds of England. Iceland has its share of one-lane tunnels and in each, clearly marked pull-outs are evenly spaced along the length of the tunnel. If the pull-outs are on your side, you do not have the right of way and must let oncoming traffic by. It is simple enough, but I must admit that I was a bit nervous at first.

Iceland is a country full of rolling hills over which approaching vehicles cannot see each other, a situation that requires caution on the road. Different areas use different means to warn approaching drivers of blind hillcrests. One is a yellow warning sign stating Blindhæð or “blind height.” Another on paved roads (a rarity in rural Iceland) has the center line split to create an artificial median between the two lanes. My favorite is a road sign at the apex of the hill with a keep-right arrow on it. I admit that I was confused at first why a road sign would be planted in the middle of a dirt road. I chuckled at them until I finally comprehended their purpose.

Sheep also require a driver to exercise caution. Throughout the entire country, sheep range where they will and often, that means that they will be on the side of the road or even in the road. Those on the side of the road will sometimes dart across in front of an oncoming vehicle. How we missed one that disappeared under the hood of our car, I will never know. It is a good thing that I slowed nearly to a crawl on seeing several sheep just on the shoulder.

Sheep Will Be in the Road

Finally, I must remark on a phenomenon in Iceland, the monster truck. The Central Oregon locals whose emotional support vehicles are lifted Dodge Rams or similar would die of envy if they could see the massive jacked-up vehicles that the tour companies use in the Icelandic highlands. These huge vehicles are not pavement princesses like most American life-style trucks. Rather, they are go-anywhere, ford-anything, drive-in-any-conditions beasts that see daily use. And they are massive.

Beverages. We are big fans of wine, beer, and coffee as our posts will certainly show. Starting with coffee, Icelandic coffee is more European than American, more espresso and less drip. That is OK, but in the end, it comes down to getting a cup when you need it. Iceland seems serious about life-work balance and also about not getting up too early. Americans wanting a big cup of coffee at 0700 are SOL in a country where coffee shops seem to open anywhere from 0900 to noon.

As for wine and hard spirits, well, Iceland has a government control model. Wine is available at retail only through the Vínbúðin, the government-run liquor stores. Taxes on alcohol are steep and Vínbúðin exists to collect taxes, not provide selection or service. The selection at the local stores, many of which outside the capital region are open for only limited hours, sucks, frankly. The best selection, and pricing without taxes, is at the duty-free at KEF. Stock up at the airport; 6 bottles per person is the duty-free limit.

Beerwise, we live in Central Oregon, where Bend is home to more breweries than exist in all of Iceland. While a few Icelandic breweries are branching out to making IPAs and hazy beers, many are mired in dull European-style lagers. If boring Budweiser-adjacent beers are your thing, you will love Viking and Gull lagers. Otherwise, if the U.S. West Coast is your frame of reference, you are going to be disappointed on the whole.

Only a Little Good Beer in Iceland

I would be remiss if I did not mention that I had the single best cocktail of my life, based on lovage, at the now-closed Slippurinn in the Westman Islands.

Finally, there is no need to buy water in Iceland. I brought along two empty one-liter plastic water bottles and we refilled them with tap water everywhere we went. The tap water in Bend is better, cleaner and crisper than any we had in Iceland, but there is no need to buy water at all.

Food. I had no idea what to expect from the food in Iceland. After the trip, I can unequivocally say that restaurant food is excellent on average based on the meals that we had. This may be skewed by our selecting high-end restaurants known for their quality, but we also stumbled on two excellent meals by chance.

Ann and I do not eat out every day when we are on holiday; restaurants get tiresome and expensive. Sometimes after a long day of seeing sights, we just want to put on comfortable clothes, put our feet up, open a bottle of wine, and graze: bread, cheese, and charcuterie make a fine meal. This requires us to forage at markets and grocery stores every day or two. Visiting stores helps us understand a culture better.

We Ate a Lot of Simple Dinners

When we do go out, we look for restaurants rooted in a place, those offering a sense of where we are via its cooking styles and flavor metaphors. One of my goals when visiting another country, especially as a chef, is to understand the culture better through its food. I am well-grounded in many cuisines but the new Nordic cuisine is one that I have not really experienced in depth. We identified five restaurants that we wanted to visit and secured reservations in advance for three. One did not accept reservations and one seemed to have no openings (though we did manage to get in once in Iceland).

Best Dish of the Trip at Slippurinn: Uni with Spiced Rhubarb Granita,
Pickled Currants, Slightly Horseradish Whipped Cream

Our meal at Slippurinn in Vestmannaeyjabær was outstanding and as a chef, I rarely ever use that word. The most surprising and second best meal was one that we stumbled on, thanks to zero ability to cook in our room, at the Hotel Aldan in Seyðisfjörður, where the sorrel ice cream dessert was one of the best dishes we tasted and the best dessert of the trip. The tasting menu at Skál in Reykjavík was really good. We had a blast at the fish buffet in Ísafjörður at Tjöruhúsið. Young chef Benjamin at Matarlist in Ólafsvík did well by us; his cured salmon was phenomenal.

Best Dessert: Sorrel Ice Cream, Crispy Rye Bread, Skyr Mousse

We dined, unplanned and serendipitously, at two restaurants in Húsavík that were worthwhile. A dinner at Naustið and our lunch at Salka Restaurant exceeded my expectations. I also stood on line to order lunch at a food truck at Skógar, Mia's Country Van, that was worth the 20 minutes standing in the pouring rain. The fish and chips were first-class.

Along with the hits come the inevitable misses. The overhyped lobster baguette at Hafnarbuðin in Höfn was a skimpy affair, all bread and no langoustines. Seafood restaurant Messinn in Reykjavík butchered arctic char beyond recognition. And our worst meal of all was at Friðheimar on the Golden Circle.

From restaurants, we learned that the fish and the lamb in Iceland are tops. We also learned that Icelandic baked goods are wonderful, especially the whole grain, dark, and rye breads. Bakeries turn out much better product on average than in America. The flake salt on most tables is excellent and we even brought some home for our table.

Icelandic Baked Goods are Excellent

We learned a good bit by shopping for our meals too. The selection in grocery stores is skimpy by American standards and fresh produce, in a country hard on the Arctic Circle, is tough to come by. Want a head of lettuce for a salad? Good luck.

While beef is not really a thing in Iceland, and we are OK with that, beef not really being a part of our regular diet, dairy products are excellent. The butter, for example, is pretty darned good, way better than what we can buy at retail in the U.S. We could buy excellent butter at my restaurant and we did, but that butter is not available to the average consumer in the U.S. as it is in Iceland. The cheese game is mostly Havarti adjacent and not terribly strong, but improving, if tales of Icelandic cheeses from a decade ago are to be believed. Skyr, the Icelandic cultured milk that is similar in some respects to yogurt, is delicious. Sadly, it is a dairy product that I cannot eat, a lesson I learned painfully.

Grocery stores, tiny in footprint, while having little fresh produce, allocate major shelf space for bottled sauces. Icelanders have a cultural obsession with sauces, primarily thinned mayonnaise and overly sweet. Sauces come with damn near everything and servers are befuddled by someone stating “no sauce.” I tried many including kokteilsósa, pylsusinnep, remolaði, pítusósa, hamborgarasósa, and hvítlaukssósa. My chef’s opinion: no thanks!

Another cultural obsession is the hotdog. Are we the only people to have gone to Iceland and not tasted their hotdogs called pylsar? I looked at many brands in the grocery stores. I smelled and looked at them as we walked by the many vendors hawking them. I am an old school hot dog snob, admittedly, and I cannot say that I saw anything that would live up to my standards.

Beds. I will say it once again here, “Iceland is a short country.” I found my overlarge frame a liability in many buildings, but the worst for me was the bedding. All beds come with individual duvets, something I could get behind. However, even when I turned the duvet on the diagonal to maximize its length, I could never get a duvet that was long enough for me. Also, I am just going to say that those places that claim they have queen beds that turn out to be two twins of differing heights jammed together are just liars, plain and simple.

Miscellaneous.

In an agricultural country like Iceland, I expected to see more crops growing. Besides the hay that we saw everywhere, the only other thing we saw was a few fields of the yellow turnips known as rutabagas, swedes, or Swedish turnips.

I did not go to Iceland with the goal of racking up new species, but I did see two species that I have never seen before: Northern Bottlenose Whales and Razorbills.

Razorbill: A New to Me Species

The canonical buildings, houses, and barns, in the countryside are white with a red metal roof. I loved them and the quasi-fairy tale looks.

White Buildings and Red Roofs

Iceland is a country of cairns marking trails, roadways, and waypoints. There is something very cool about seeing cairns stretching in a row to the horizon.

Land of Cairns

It seems that kids are outside playing (rather than gaming) after school until all hours, which makes sense in a country with cold dark winters. They must enjoy summer while it lasts.

The smell of many fishing towns is the waft of fishiness on the air from the processing plant. Not a low tide reek, but almost a boiled seafood smell.

The hot water at many places where we stayed proved to be scalding, dangerous even without extreme care. The overwhelming majority of Icelandic homes use geothermal water straight out of the ground, which is usually between 70°C and 80°C (158-176°F).

Coming from a state where weed is legal, I noticed the absence of its smell, smelling it one time only on arriving at our final apartment in Reykjavík.

The main tourist street in Reykjavík, Laugavegur, reminds me of Bourbon Street in the French Quarter in New Orleans: tourist hell. Were I to go back, I would skip Reykjavík although it is way more charming than the town at the top of my list to skip, Anchorage AK.

My final observation is that KEF is a shit airport, the worst I have ever visited. Way to give yourself a self-inflicted black eye Iceland!