My final post about Iceland, figured I’d add some fun facts and opinions from my adventures that I may or may not have mentioned in any of my previous thoughts.
1. As a follow up to my Iceland Adventures Begin!! post, I did try Gull on the flight home and yep, it’s the Molson Canadian of Iceland, MEH!
2. The only time I ever got ID’d in Iceland was when I was boarding a plane. I found this interesting considering all the reservations I had for tours, transportation, and hotels.
3. I swear every local in North Iceland from Akureyri to Mývatn talks like a Wilding (Game of Thrones). It’s the accent!! 😛 The accent is different in the south and I’m terrible with accents so cannot pinpoint what it sounds like… but Wildlings I know.
4. There is no language barrier WHATSOEVER with Icelanders in regard to English. They speak it perfectly. They also know all our slang and current buzzwords and happenings etc, etc, etc so no need to hold back!!
5. I loved it when I had to interact with a local and they would speak to me in Icelandic first. It made me think I don’t look like a tourist! Maybe they were humouring me though, Icelanders have a fantastic sense of humour. They are very proud of their Viking heritage but wow did they EVER like to poke fun at the names of things like streets, mountains, landmarks, etc… anything that has an Icelandic name that we would never begin to know how to pronounce!
6. The heart-shaped red traffic lights in Akureyri are a win for humanity!
7. I traveled through the Vaðlaheiðargöng tunnel which is east of Akureyri and just over 7 km in length. It only just opened in December 2018.
8. The “P” word (if you’ve read any of my other posts) is ‘pony’ and highly not recommended to use!
9. There is a street in Akureyri that has a nursing home, hospital, and graveyard all within 1 block. I found this interesting, what else can I say? Akureyrians are efficient!! Map showing these locations in close proximity:
10. Data:
As much as I wanted to learn about dual SIM for my phone and therefore searched for an Icelandic SIM card (physical or virtual) within the first couple days of my arrival in Iceland, I found that I did not require it at all and therefore saved myself between $30-$150 CAD on data. Didn’t need a wifi puck either.
- Why didn’t I require data?
- Anything non-essential (everything!) or planned ahead of time could be done on hotel wifi or any other establishment with free wifi (yes I have a VPN!)
- Planning ahead meant downloading Google maps for offline use. Yes you can do that!
- GPS still worked on my phone without data or wifi and with a previously downloaded Google map of Iceland, I always knew where I was and where I was going. Getting directions from Google required a connection but why, why is that essential? The streets are right there on the map and so is my location!! You can ‘star’ locations you want to remember so I did all that ahead of time. It was like reading an old paper map on my phone with my little GPS dot following my every move!
- I could make local calls from my hotel rooms at no cost, never needed to do it while I was out and about
- No emergencies arose during my week long stay and if one did, I could have instantly turned on data. My local provider offered a $12 flat rate per day for international voice and data. So I saved $12 a day for every day I didn’t use it, which was every day!
- Call display still worked on incoming calls and texts at no extra cost
- When using the Fitbit and Geocaching apps to track my adventures, the GPS worked and tracked my location with no wifi or data. Fitbit loaded and saved maps of where I went once I returned to a wifi area. Geocaching I think had saved maps I looked at previously, because they were there while I was using the app on no wifi or data.
- Did I miss anything? I just simply found no need to pay for data on this trip! I’m not one of those humans that constantly spends time on their phone reading and watching useless stuff, like really, that YouTube video on facebook about the latest nonsense can wait until I’m back at the hotel or in a coffee shop! Even then I probably still wouldn’t watch.
11. I did play WoW in my hotel room on wifi… The Love is in the Air seasonal event was on and this was my 10th year battling Apothecary Hummel for the Big Love Rocket mount but I digress!! The wifi connection was great!!
12. Biggest disappointment of the whole excursion was definitely missing out on the Northern Lights! I even had a tour booked so I could get out of the city and hopefully have a better chance at seeing them. And as sunny as it was most days, the evenings clouded over pretty much every day I was in Iceland, so nothin’!! Boooooo 🙁
13. My flight back to Canada left Reykjavik at 5:00 pm local time and arrived in Vancouver at around 5:00 pm local time! Does that mean it was 5:00 pm the whole way back?? It was certainly daylight all the way. Now I know IT’S ALWAYS 5:00 SOMEWHERE…
