Iceland 2018 - I Didn't Come for the Food

Originally posted May 22nd, 2018.

Iceland - truly a mystical place - the perfect land for a fairy tale to be filmed OR maybe find a sea monster OR the land Santa Clause goes to recruit next year's reindeer substitutes (never know when Rudolph will need a break). This little island in the middle of the ocean is a nature lovers paradise and a food critiques nightmare.

From pre-trip research of Iceland, you should have a few expectations gathered from the common trends of all travel bloggers -

It's expensive…even for American monies.
It's a playground of nature.
Sometimes you can see the Northern lights.
& Sometimes you can find puffins.

Throw a cheap(ish) flight in (big follower of where the cheap flights take me) combined with #2 above and we were willing to take a chance on 3 and 4 (Happy 6 months of dating to us!!) I put my thrifty traveler pants on (plane pants work too) and was ready to see what we could do. Oh, and don't forget to pack your stick-shift driving boyfriend...he may just come in handy. :)

Iceland is wacky & it's all yours and your quite sh*tty/cheapest car in the rental lot to explore. Public transportation isn't really a thing in Iceland, but neither are people really outside of Reykavik. You will find tour buses and apparently there are some local buses, but hitch-hiking or renting a car is your best bet. We did meet one guy who was bicycling around the island, so I guess that is an option...I have to say, I do not recommend it.

Here is Jen's 411 on this WaCkY place -

First off, in Icelandic, it's actually spelt "island"...just "i-s-l-a-n-d". Hashtag #creative. You don't need to worry about being able to communicate - their native language is funky, but everyone we ran into knew English.

Almost no one lives there - exaggeration, but the entire country has fewer people than Minneapolis!!! Get out of Reykavik and you don’t find much until you get 12+ hours away in the old capital, Akureyri. Akuereyri was our favorite city in Iceland. I'm not sure if that's because it's truly a neat city or because we were desperately needing civilization and some options...either way, it's a really cute coast town and even has a WATERPARK, which we didn’t go to.

The variety of landscapes is GORGEous and pretty wicked cool. At any moment on your drive, turn left and you will see 18+ waterfalls; turn right and there is a black sandy beach...sometimes with a crashed airplane and sometimes not...look ahead and there is a glacier fanning out of a mountain range, and I'm sure somewhere in the distance is a volcano. No joke, @ anytime you can look in each direction and find a different type of landscape which makes Iceland incredibly unique and beautiful.

PS) If you are starting to doubt the existence of the crashed airplane on the beach where the sign points, you are not alone. BUT keep walking (or turn around); I promise, eventually you will find it; it IS there (evidence below, taken on my own camera).

Waterfalls - nuff said. If you are a fanatic, I know a guy...I mean a place. This is a waterfall real, all of Iceland. & let me tell you, we missed a LOT of others and after about 25, stopped photographing all of them. :p

Off-season - something else to note that we probably didn't take into full consideration is that April is still off-season for tourism in Iceland. Lots of restaurants aren't open in off-season and at majority of the hostels, we were maybe 1 of 3 groups staying there. For hiking, this was amazing. We would have trails to ourselves! But if you are a solo traveler looking to make friends, I would not recommend this time period of travel. Some roads are closed, certain roads are just really not recommended in the dinky rental cars, and the biggest bummer of all - campgrounds are not open yet. :( The weather can also be somewhat unpredictable in April (Hey Minnesotans, we can relate, eh?). The last 2 days of our trip, it rained.a.lot. If you aren't doing outdoors things in Iceland, there isn't really much to do (we did find a pretty neat cave to tour, but even that was quite moist inside). Anyways, we were itching to be out of the car and explore some sites and every once in a while, there would be a 5-10 minute span of pure sun and rainbows. So we decided that every time we saw the sun, we had to pull off at the next attraction sign no matter what it was (things are very well marked in Iceland - don't be the fool that starts the trip pulling off at every.single.one. - you will make it nowhere fast). BUT we actually stumbled upon some pretty cool stuff & it's a great way to explore the less common sites that you maybe didn't read about in #1-10 things to see in Iceland.

Reasons we went in off-season -

Hiking in 50s = amazingggggg. If it's not raining, this is the perfect temp for long day hikes. You don't need too much water, you get less tired than you would in full sun, and most people wait until the summer, so YAY.
Planning ahead - we were able to fly by the seat and book Tuesday night stay on Monday night which isn't always the case.
Northern Lights - there is still a chance of seeing the northern lights - unfortunately, we had a LOT (by a lot, I mean all) cloudy nights in Iceland.
Puffin season - justttttt around the corner. They usually start emerging late April depending on the weather. We also did not spot any of these guys....except 1...
We were just ready to take a vacay and I love MN summers and don't want to miss them.

Anyways, back to Iceland. The food….let's talk about the "food". If you love bread, you'll be fine. If you love cheese and dried fish, you'll also be fine. If horse is part of your diet, hollaaa. BUT ripe veggies, juicy fruit, greens of any kind, GOOD LUCK. Travelers literally eat corn flakes, bananas, jam, and bread. This was something we didn't consider enough before we went to Iceland. To be thrifty in Iceland, it's recommended and mandatory that you grocery shop and plan stops where you can cook or picnic. We interpreted this as "you should grocery shop to save money" and less like "you HAVE to grocery shop if you want to eat". In small towns (aka everything), you might find a restaurant or 2, but they typically close by 7 or 8pm, aren't always open in off-season, and you can't find anything on the menu for less than $20.

If the food is bomb.com, I don't have a huge issue with more $, more probs, but we didn't find that. Something came with "guacamole" and I had no idea what this foreign substance was that we were given. IF you do eat out in Iceland, I can stand behind pizza or fish 'n' chips - we've seen worse.

So back to the #1 point "it's expensive". You can read these words and not until you go to a grocery store and see that eggs are $8 / dozen or find bad nachos for $27, it doesn't really feel THAT expensive. Bread is like $2 and I don't NEEEED green peppers or avocados or like any nutrient dense foods - it's only 9 days - so it's fine…right? Say hello to peanut butter tortillas and Skyr yogurt packs and feed off the beauty of the land. Fasting is good for the bod once in a while, they say. But really, stock up on groceries and assume you will be eating majority of your meals in the car OR realize you 1) may go hungry or 2) will be paying $27 for canned nacho cheese dumped over stale tortilla chips. Aside from the food, national parks are free and housing is similar to the rest of Europe. If you plan to do any guided tours, I suggest raising the budget quite a jump as those will add up fast! I prefer to be my own guide, but some of the things you simply cannot do without a tour - like visiting some of the caves or glacier climbing or the INFAMOUS BLUE LAGOON.

Summary - Iceland aka "island" is really an amazing place to explore the great outdoors. The amount of exploring is truly endless. You could spend a lifetime just visiting each of the waterfalls. (#waterfallWednesday = new Insta tag) So if you are a Mother Earth enthusiast, all you have to do is take a ride, and it's yours for the taking. Just remember, you didn't come for the food.

Happy travels, ya'll! Be back for the next one :)

Peace & love,

Jenna & this stick-shift driving man of mine