The golden circle isn't a long trip. There's a lot more to see.
> For a country constantly emphasizing the need for safety on the road, I was surprised to get a very beat up Toyota with worn out brake pads, no working charger in the car and the guy just saying "you get what you pay for".
Car hire services have been under scrutiny by the media here recently for unsafe cars, bad service and selling their old cars with the odometer rolled back. Unfortunately there still hasn't been a proper crackdown on them. I recommend to everyone to use the global brands.
> It's incredibly expensive. Two sandwiches (and I mean 2x slices of bread with some cheese and lettuce) and soft drinks was like 20EUR or more.
It's infuriating. Reykjavík and the bigger towns are OK but the price gouging that happens all around cannot be justified.
Reykjavik itself didn't feel any more crowded than any other major European city. Far less so than London or Paris. Probably more like Amsterdam, but with a smaller overall footprint.
Our rental was a Golf Polo (the small hatchback) from a name-brand agency (Hertz or somebody like that) and it was in fine condition.
It was expensive, no question. But, that's also fairly well documented in travel brochures (online or otherwise). So, it shouldn't be a surprise. We opted to rent a flat and cook for most meals. The only problem that caused - the grocer has a wall of milk of varying degrees of "sourness" and we grabbed something that, to my American palate, was rotten. Oops.
Blue Lagoon was definitely touristy. We went at dusk in a snow storm, so the atmosphere was nice (the mist and snow made it less obvious we were swimming with a few hundred other tourists). We enjoyed it, but there's no need to go twice unless you really like a spa experience.
We went snorkeling in Silfra Fissure, which was neat. Nothing at all like snorkeling on a coral reef.
I'd love to go back and do the whole ring road around the island, with a bit of hiking and camping mixed in. We only had a long weekend, so stayed in the city and all the sites we visited were fairly close. We didn't get to the northwest or southeast.
It was about half the price of other places at the time. I was fully prepared to be disappointed, but it was excellent — and had a full kitchen, which helped because food in Iceland is insanely expensive ($20 for an 'authentic' Icelandic hot dog at an outdoor stand is real ). Groceries were only(!) about 20% more than New York (still high, but not unreasonable for a remote island).
Also, I think Iceland is missing an oppertunity to export high-quality room-darkening blinds. Vampire-approved.
It's a beautiful country, a bit eerily so. The blue lagoon is stunning to look at but too expensive to bathe in. Once you've seen it, you've seen it. The views don't change that much. Even on the golden triangle, looking out the window tends to get boring.
For a country constantly emphasizing the need for safety on the road, I was surprised to get a very beat up Toyota with worn out brake pads, no working charger in the car and the guy just saying "you get what you pay for".
It's incredibly expensive. Two sandwiches (and I mean 2x slices of bread with some cheese and lettuce) and soft drinks was like 20EUR or more.
I enjoyed the trip but don't really understand the hype. Perhaps it just gets more exposure cause it's safe and easy.
Among the 40+ countries I've visited the best views and nature for me were in Tenerife (of all places), inland around El Teide, Morocco's Atlas mountains and North Vietnam, everything between Hanoi and the Laotian / Chinese borders.