Our Epic Iceland Adventure-July 14-21, 2-18-

[hygienist999]

Afterwards, Drew and Stefan surprised us with a bonus stop. Diamond Beach, near the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon. This beach has black sand and chunks of ice lying on the beach that resemble diamonds glistening in the sun. Such a beautiful place. We all appreciated the opportunity to see this beautiful beach.

 

[hygienist999]

Dinner this night was at the Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon. the restaurant had a contemporary design and was located in the 4-star Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon. The food was truly amazing.

Side Note: We always pre-ordered our meals. Drew had his handy dandy iPad and would come around with the options and he would submit them to the restaurants a day or so in advance.

 

[hygienist999]

We arrived at the Icelandair Hotel Vik about 11:15 pm. So, straight to bed.

View from bus as we rode to the hotel.

 

[sayhello]

We arrived at the Icelandair Hotel Vik about 11:15 pm. So, straight to bed.

View from bus as we rode to the hotel.
View attachment 345634

Gorgeous sunset!

Sayhello

 

[pjacobi]

Steak and burgers? I guess you were not adventurous to try Icelandic sheep head or fermented shark.


-Paul

 

[sayhello]

Steak and burgers? I guess you were not adventurous to try Icelandic sheep head or fermented shark.


-Paul

There's adventurous and then there's insane.

Sayhello

 

[Rapunzellover]

There's adventurous and then there's insane.

Sayhello

Indeed.

And even if sheep head and fermented shark weren't crazy weird choices, I see nothing wrong with having a burger or steak if that's what you like. I had a burger on my London/Paris adventure because the other options had stuff that didn't agree with me. And I normally loathe burgers and never eat them. But this burger was good, and I actually liked it. Red meat in other countries can be better than the overprocessed junk served in the US. I had a great steak in France too, and didn't regret it one bit.

 

[kristilew]

I feel like you were on an entirely different, better version of this ABD than we were a few weeks later! The blue skies in your photos were MIA the week we were there. The lunch at the tomato farm occurred after the tour, so we were all starving by the time we fought with all the cruise ship excursion guests to get our little bowl of soup. The dinner at Fosshotel was ice cold and barely edible, when they finally figured out who had preordered what (meanwhile, the dishes just sat on trays for half an hour.)

I’m disappointed that our trip did not go as smoothly (perhaps because we did not have the official Disney guide?) but I’m happy to read how well yours went. I was thinking of writing a cautionary report but now I think it was more just an off week when we went. (And of course even Disney can’t control the weather. But I did find the constant grey a bit depressing)

 

[Bobo912]

I feel like you were on an entirely different, better version of this ABD than we were a few weeks later! The blue skies in your photos were MIA the week we were there. The lunch at the tomato farm occurred after the tour, so we were all starving by the time we fought with all the cruise ship excursion guests to get our little bowl of soup. The dinner at Fosshotel was ice cold and barely edible, when they finally figured out who had preordered what (meanwhile, the dishes just sat on trays for half an hour.)

I’m disappointed that our trip did not go as smoothly (perhaps because we did not have the official Disney guide?) but I’m happy to read how well yours went. I was thinking of writing a cautionary report but now I think it was more just an off week when we went. (And of course even Disney can’t control the weather. But I did find the constant grey a bit depressing)

Sorry if you mentioned this in another post already, but what happened to your Disney guide?

 

[FSU Girl]

This trip seems amazing, I just read all the way through. I've always wanted to go to Iceland. The puffins are so cute! The scenery is just unbelievably beautiful there.

 

[kristilew]

Sorry if you mentioned this in another post already, but what happened to your Disney guide?

Drew hurt his back on the departure right before ours. We had two Icelandic guides, Stefan and Julli.

We adored them, and it was a wonderful experience to have a full on Icelandic viewpoint and to see these two friends interact and lead together. However, they kept reminding us the Iceland motto is “petta reddast” which is basically “it will all work out.”

This seemed to be the philosophy applied to making sure 40 people ate regular meals - 2:30 lunch? 9:30 dinner after 11 am lunch? Petta reddast! - as well as to dealing with the hordes of other group tours that were everywhere we went. For better and occasionally for worse, this was the least Disney of our 5 Adventures By Disney

 

[BluesTraveler]

@krstilew, I feel the same way reading the trip report! - I think this group experience was better than ours. We loved our guides and itinerary, and we all agree Iceland is one of our very favorite places we've ever visited (high praise in our family). But I have discouraged friends from taking the ABD trip. For us, it didn't provide the high-end experience we were looking for due to the large group size. (However, I still maintain if you are an only-travel-with-ABD-and-no-other-way, Iceland should be on your list.)

 

[carpenta]

In my opinion "high end experience" is an oxymoron in the case of Iceland. IMO it is a hard scrabble life due to the conditions and lack the infrastructure to offer five star luxury. Even if a resort was built you still must deal with the roads, massive overwhelming tourists, high cost of living, traveling to areas far in between and need to import most of their basic daily needs. I appreciate Iceland for it's basic existence and would caution others not to expect Maui or resort living. But I do agree that overall ABD HAS to do something about it's overall dining while on their adventures, their competition blows then away in this category. Just my opinion.

 

[BluesTraveler]

In my opinion "high end experience" is an oxymoron in the case of Iceland. IMO it is a hard scrabble life due to the conditions and lack the infrastructure to offer five star luxury. Even if a resort was built you still must deal with the roads, massive overwhelming tourists, high cost of living, traveling to areas far in between and need to import most of their basic daily needs. I appreciate Iceland for it's basic existence and would caution others not to expect Maui or resort living. But I do agree that overall ABD HAS to do something about it's overall dining while on their adventures, their competition blows then away in this category. Just my opinion.

Carpenta, I don't mean high-end experience to be the same as luxury in terms of accommodations. I think it's possible to have a high-end experience camping! I mean it in the sense of having logistics smoothly taken care of, travel challenges eased, high level of individual attention, etc.

 

[carpenta]

I agree 100% with you Bluestraveler. But my impression is that Iceland is a "sundial" country by what I gathered from the review and my own travels time is subject to not a specific hour but a window where schedules are "on time" if it happens within a few hours of schedule. My interaction with our native guides is more of a facilitator than a attentive guide where our guide pointed you in the direction and let you go. They were happy to answer any questions and give you history but more of a "free range' approach. We liked that and we traveled with another company. I only put that out for it is my impression that your guides may be similar and I wonder if that is the way the native guides work overall. I don't know. I would bet that being the first time over there any company has a learning curve and unfortunately the first group(s) may have to suffer along. No disrespect but that was my impression of Iceland.

 

[BluesTraveler]

I agree 100% with you Bluestraveler. But my impression is that Iceland is a "sundial" country by what I gathered from the review and my own travels time is subject to not a specific hour but a window where schedules are "on time" if it happens within a few hours of schedule. My interaction with our native guides is more of a facilitator than a attentive guide where our guide pointed you in the direction and let you go. They were happy to answer any questions and give you history but more of a "free range' approach. We liked that and we traveled with another company. I only put that out for it is my impression that your guides may be similar and I wonder if that is the way the native guides work overall. I don't know. I would bet that being the first time over there any company has a learning curve and unfortunately the first group(s) may have to suffer along. No disrespect but that was my impression of Iceland.

I see what you're saying. That's different from our experience - I would say our guides - particularly Julli, the native Icelander - were top notch, some of the best we've had (whether with ABD or when we have hired private guides in other places). My issue was definitely group size. But I do not mean to hijack this excellent trip report, and I will say again we loved, loved Iceland.

 

[kristilew]

I see what you're saying. That's different from our experience - I would say our guides - particularly Julli, the native Icelander - were top notch, some of the best we've had (whether with ABD or when we have hired private guides in other places). My issue was definitely group size. But I do not mean to hijack this excellent trip report, and I will say again we loved, loved Iceland.

Exactly. I think we’re all responding to the same thing. Because Iceland is not a luxury destination per se, group size is an important factor. Where restaurants are not used to handling large groups, there can be problems. (Or where there is only 1 restaurant that can - we were horrified by our farewell dinner that got completely highjacked by the other tour group sharing our tables.). And where there is only one restroom, a large group is a challenge. It was especially obvious on this trip because there were so many other, smaller, tour groups tracking our exact itinerary. It was easy to see that we were not getting premium treatment. (I talked to one lady we saw everywhere, including all the same hotels, and she told me seeing our group made her so glad she’d gone for the “more expensive” 16 person tour. It cost $3500 pp for 13 days. That hurt)

By contrast, I did the Peru ABD 10 years ago with 28 people. Conditions were more rugged (haul your own bucket of water to flush the toilet) but also more manageable.

I’m done high jacking this excellent report as well. Please continue, OP, when you can, as it seems your trip was the ideal!

 

[hygienist999]

Sorry, I've been away. My DH and I traveled with another tour group to Banff Canada and we have just returned. So, I'll try to start up where I left off.

 

[hygienist999]

Day 4 - Whale of a Time -

We were up early as we had to head to the Reykjavik Domestic Airport for our 30 minute flight to Akureyri.





This was our Whale watching adventure day, so we were all super excited.

We arrived at the cute little village for our Ektafiskur Experience and Culinary Tasting.

Elvar was our guide, but he is also the owner of the fish factory. He was very likable and wicked funny. The joke from Drew was that he looks like Pierce Bronson, and he does.

We gathered around the front of the fish factory for a brief history and then Elvar served us some of his homemade liquor. It tasted like cough syrup to me.

 

[hygienist999]

Now comes a funny story. Our guides, Drew and Stefan, decide to surprise our group. So, as Elvar is guiding us around his property, we come to a bath house and people are swimming in the cold water, then getting into the hot tubs. As we are looking out we notice a woman who is topless coming up out of the water. At this moment, Elvar turns on a little speaker and starts to play the intro to the tv show Baywatch. My DH says, “He has some guts to play that”. The woman walked upon the deck to the hot tubs with a huge smile on her face, all the while the music is playing. Then we notice Drew and Stefan running out into the water, then running back to shore. Bad timing for sure, but so very hilarious.


I snapped a photo of the speaker exchange. No one noticed while it happened, I just happened to take a photo of it.