Planning Your Trip to Iceland - Flights to Iceland, Transportation, and Accommodation
Despite being around since the 9th century AD, Iceland has remained relatively undiscovered to tourists until the last few years, where a few films and Instagram photos have put it on the map for the rest of the world. Iceland's pure natural beauty, diversity of landscapes, and rich literary and governmental traditions are unparalleled in my travels so far, and make for a really unique visit. That being said - prepare yourself for harsh weather, relatively uninhabited stretches of country, and some rough roads.
GETTING TO ICELAND
Iceland Air flies relatively cheap flights out of major hub airports, with the bonus of bundling vacation packages. My boyfriend and I flew separately due to work schedules, and he went this route and had a pretty pleasant experience. I used some SkyMiles accrued with my Delta Skymiles card and flew with Delta, which was also pretty nice! We both used GotoBus to get to New York to fly out of JFK, for pretty much half the price of flying out of Ohio. If you are willing to tough it out on a bus for a few hours, it is well worth the savings to get to a bigger hub airport to fly out.
Transportation in Iceland
YOU NEED TO RENT A CAR. I'm great at taking public transportation in any country I have been to, but unless you are just staying in Reykjavík, there are no trains or metros and few bus routes across the country. We used SadCars, a company that rents used, reliable older cars. Get insurance. Most roads are great, but there are parts of Route 1 that are not paved, and there are places you'll want to go that just have gravel roads. When returning their car, a couple in front of us got charged a lot because the windshield was chipped from gravel :/ If you can, get a 4 wheel drive. There were times we weren't sure that our little Toyota Yaris was going to make it up steep, icy mountain roads.
We did look into getting a camper van from HappyCamper, which looks like so much fun! When we added the costs of campgounds/hotels, car rental, etc., we found it to be cheaper to just rent from SadCars, thoguh we met other people who were happy campers with their HappyCamper :)
Accomodation in Iceland
Due to outlandish reasons, my boyfriend doesn't want his real name used in this blog, but has asked that I mention him as "Mr. Magnificent" [eyeroll]. We'll just be Bond about it and call him "M". M is quite the outdoorsman, so we camped. We researched ahead of our trip and found it was the cheapest way to stay, and campgrounds in Iceland generally had great facilities including hot showers, kitchens stocked with dishes and cookware, wifi, and maps and I was comfortable. Do realize that Iceland is extremely windy, so make sure that you take a four-season tent and warm sleeping bag. We went in the off season, so we did not book ahead and just found campsites on our map. In the high tourist season, I would definitely book ahead and have campsites in mind.
After camping for a week, we needed to thaw out and stayed in a few hostels along the way. Hostels are a bit more expensive here than in other countries I've visited, but they are also among the nicest & most stylish I've ever stayed in. Check HostelWorld to book stays at two of our favorites, BusHostel Reykjavik and Seydisfjordur Hostel Hafaldan.
Another option is to try guesthouses and farmhouses, and did stay in one we found on Trivago.com. Tip - if you use your own bedding, you don't have to pay as much!
