On the ground in Iceland, finally. The KEF airport is full of good-smelling food, and a pleasant lack of loud pages, boarding announcements and departure delay notices.
We’re traveling with a friend and ended up getting two rental cars. He tells us his car company is supposed to meet him at the terminal and drive him personally to his rental car. Never heard of such a thing, but okay. So we wait with him for a bit (our car is outside the terminal and we needed to take a bus to get there).
After a while, he asked the info desk and they tell him to get on the shuttle bus with the regular peasants (us).
Rental Car Saga (+tips)
The area for the rental car shuttle bus at KEF is very clearly marked. You leave the airport and follow a winding covered pathway to a bus parking area. Unfortunately for KEF renters, there is no timetable or any hint of when the bus comes round. We waited maybe 15 minutes for the bus. I can’t imagine how anyone copes with it in the winter. People were unpacking their suitcases on the sidewalk to get to warmer layers. Of course we, having already stuffed our bags full, wore all of our bulkiest layers onto the plane.
The shuttle bus makes 5 stops around to various companies. Our friend gets off at the first, we get off at the 5th. It’s just after 7am.
I booked the car through Alamo, but when we get to the desk, it very clearly doesn’t matter and we work with whoever is available (Enterprise).
Peter, not having rented a car in a while, is unsure when the rep tells us the make and model is different from what we picked out (the “or similar” is, truthfully, in very fine print). He asks about it, so she turns around and picks out a nicer car that she thinks we’ll like better; sweet.
After a tip from an acquaintance, we opt to add in the WiFi package to the car, in lieu of the GPS. After having used it for a day, I thoroughly recommend taking this same option. It’s roughly $11/day, which is the same as what we each would pay for phone service abroad, and so quickly cuts that cost to half.
We’ve got to head north for some paperwork, and so leave our friend to do his own thing around the city until we get back.
By 9:30am, we’ve been on the road for over an hour and have already passed by Reykjavík when we see a missed call. It’s our friend and could we please meet him at the rental counter. What?? That was 2 hours ago!
We call back and long story sort of shortened, he booked originally a manual transmission car and canceled it after noticing. He booked a new automatic car with a different company, but didn’t realize it was a different company. So after waiting in line with 15 other people at the wrong counter, he comes to find that he is not in the right place, and the bus is taking it’s time coming back around.
He already figured out his next step in the delay between calling us and our calling back. But, this does give me the warm fuzzies for my ridiculously thorough itinerary document 😜.
Driving in Iceland
Driving is on the right side of the road, and completely full of roundabouts. In the first 30 minutes of the drive from the airport, we must have gone through at least 10 roundabouts.
Our phone maps (working on WiFi!) kept saying the individual street names to turn on, but you really only need to watch for Route 1/Reykjavík signs.
We tried to stick to the speed limit, as I’ve heard there are traffic cameras everywhere and they’re not shy about mailing you a speeding ticket.
I drove first and was working mostly by cruise control once we were outside of the city area.
There’s an enormous tunnel under a fjord that we had to drive through, 5.7km long and very weird. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing.
To the DC
We had to go up to Stykkishólmur to the Vesturlandi District Commissioner’s office to pick up some marriage documents.
We had heard from our DC that he might not be onsite, but there would be someone else for us to talk with.
Well, yes. There was. But she didn’t speak great English, and also didn’t seem to know much about the marriage documents. When we asked about a specific paper and getting our birth certificates back, she looked dumbfounded.
She couldn’t get in touch with our DC, so Peter emailed him–still waiting on a response. Otherwise, we left with our notarized forms and headed out to lunch.
After seeing the documents, I think we would have been fine to go through the main Reykjavík office but I guess this was a fine way to play it safe.
making life an adventure 