Travel day
This trip was a package trip with Icelandair holidays. It included flight, hotel and a trip to try and see the northern lights. We upgraded the hotel from the 2 star one we were offered for around £50 per person. We chose the hotel Klettur which turned out to be in a good location and also had plenty of free parking for the hire car that we picked up near the airport.
The hire car was pre booked by us before our trip through a company called Discover Cars (a booking agent type website like booking.com). It turned out to be a good deal and a very thorough company to deal with. We would recommend them.
The flight was on time and pleasant, we only took hand luggage so we whizzed through both airports, Manchester and Keflavik. Our instructions for the hire car were to ring the number we had been given to arrange for a driver to collect us to take us to their site. This was a very efficient service and we were soon on our way to the hire car site. Once there the agent, Andrea went through our booking, checking everything with us and explaining the different driving rules in Iceland and guiding us to take photos of the important information they have up in their office about T&C’s. She advised us that the insurance that came with our booking through discover Cars was indeed better than they could offer us at their company Fara. In particular the windscreen cover which turned out a good thing as we did get a little stone chip along the way.
We were invited to go over the car with a fine tooth comb for scratches, dints, chips etc of which there were several, all were noted down to our satisfaction. We were soon on our way to Reykjavik a 45 min journey. The roads were quiet, very well signposted, we used Apple CarPlay as our sat nav which worked really well.
We arrived and parked at the hotel, the check in guy was really helpful. We went up to our room on the top floor (6) to find we had been upgraded to a balcony room, very clean, had all the amenities and to Paul’s surprise the bed had two single quilts, very European but something he hadn’t come across before.
After a chill out, we headed off in the car along the sea front to get our bearings and then found a parking spot close to the other end of town where we walked up the Main Street to find food. We found the rainbow street leading up to the famous church and took some photos. On the same street we stopped for some food, Icelandic fish and chips, a beer and a sparking water which cost us an eye watering £44.