Oh, man, I had forgotten about this thread! We had a great time in Iceland, but i winged it so i’ll tell you of our/my experience.
So, the overall view is that I used maps.me (the app) to drive around since the GPS in your phone can tell you where you are even without data - but honestly i had data almost the entire trip in the south end. For whatever reason maps.me also has a lot of locations marked you might otherwise not find - trailheads, caves, stuff like that.
I never used cash even once. Even out in the middle of nowhere the locals used cellular credit card terminals. But we never got to the east or north parts of the country, so it might be good to get some cash if you’re heading that way, jic.
We did a lot of guided activities through TripAdvisor, which at that time seemed more popular with vendors than AirBnB. But in subsequent trip to other countries AirBnB is by far the leader in activities, so it might have changed by then. We never took a bus tour, just drove around ourselves, but the activities we tried were nice to meet people and break up the groove of things.
When we landed around 8am i didn’t even have a car rented and i couldn’t even figure out How to Phone, and all the in-airport rentals were hundreds of dollars so she pulled up a place called Sixt a few hundred meters away from the terminal and we got a nice and peppy Isuzu hatchback that served us well. We ended up staying in an AirBnB in Hafnarfjörður - it’s about a 20 min easy drive from downtown, and since i was coming for the outdoor stuff found it more attractive than hanging out downtown. But next time i probably would switch.
We ended up doing a Food Tour of Reykjavík around 1 or 2 pm the day we landed after getting settled in the AirBnB. Just fyi, it was great, but come hungry because the amount of food was … incompatible with proper digestion. Rye bread ice cream and lobster bisque and street hot dogs and Skyr and alcohol maybe isn’t the most patient combination, if you catch my drift. But everyone was fun and it was a great way to start the trip, imo.
In Reykavik, the city settlement museum was perfectly sized and deep enough to be interested but not a place to spend the day in. The National Museum was a more traditional experience and was, perhaps, a bit boring by comparison ( I think it was more the atmosphere than the content) although i was very depressed to see things from my childhood in a pile of junk at the back of the museum in the “the way things were” exhibit. The Settlement Museum gift shop was very small but had several handcrafted things that seemed way too expensive at the time but wish i had picked up - the National Museum seemed more towards books and generic souvenirs.
Our tour guide pointed out that most clothing stores imported their clothes, but the Handknitting Association of Iceland still had (as far as you can tell) local handknitted stuff, Skólavörðustígur 19, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland.
Downtown Iceland is both modern but not at all big; though this is my groove and felt quite at home. The church had a Martin Luther Playmobile set in its extremely tiny gift shop / ticket counter that I almost got. It’s mainly worth it for the view in the steeple. The church is relatively unfurnished otherwise.
We never went to any bars or nightlife, fyi. We jet lagged crashed that night, and then the next day started outdoor stuff. BTW, Puffin boat tour = boring, but Whale boat tour = fun. Just be careful doing food tour + whale tour, if you catch my drift.
We took the “golden circle” loop in one long day to see Þingvellir National Park, the geysers “The Geyser” and Gullfoss waterfall. Gullfoss was the most impressive, the geysers the least - at least if you’ve seen geysers elsewhere before. The nearby tourist trap looked like it had 100x more investment than the geysers themselves, which is a weird feature of Iceland right now, a lot of private investment spending a lot of money.
I would 100% recommend Golden Circle first and not last, since it’s a great way to start but will seem less impressive once you’ve seen the glaciers. There’s lots of helpful signs and materials and really no reason to get a guide. Supposedly if you have time there’s a diving activity in the lake in Þingvellir which sounded fun.
I think the next day we did the museums and the whale tours in Reykavik.
The next day east along the ring road toward Sölheimajökull to do some ice climbing. That was a blast, if maybe a bit short. Some girls in another party stripped down to their birthday suits for some Instagram photos across the crevice. Along that road there are several major waterfalls which we bumped into randomly, so give yourself time going that way to catch them.
The next day we drove all the way to Vatnajökull National Park which is where the OMG glaciers really are. If you´re in a camper they have a really nice campground outside of the basalt column waterfalls at Skaftafell. When we were there they were empty. We then did the Jarkolsarlon lagoon glacier boat thing and did some snowmobiling on the glacier itself - stupid expensive but a ton of fun. On the way back to Reyk we hit upon a random “Puffin” sign before the long metal bridge across the glacial washout, and a cute Icelandic girl who supposedly grew up on the nearby farm drove everyone out to a intermittent island where there were a ton of puffins.
There’s a ton to do in Iceland so i’m sure you can flesh out 12 days pretty quickly! We never rode horses (but, you know, Texas, so less interested in that) and weren’t even able to make the Blue Lagoon. We also never made it past the lagoon nor went around the north or west.
Wow, ok, that was long! Hope that whets your appetite!
And eat some marzipan/licorice candy for me.