A week in Iceland Feb 2022

Having booked this previously in 2021 but due to covid had to be rescheduled. We rebooked for Feb half term 2022.

We based ourselves near Laugarvatn in the golden circle so that we could drive to the places we wanted to visit, having been before, we decided to find a budget friendly chalet in the hope to see the northern lights and to see some new places. We were travelling as a family but also with my nephew who hadn’t been.

We rented an AirBNB with a hottub, and a car from Budget (pickup was right in the airport).

Here’s our itinerary

Drive from the airport to our chalet
Secret lagoon
Geysir
GulFoss
The Perlan, Reykjavik
Black sands beach (Reynisfjara, vik)
Selkalandsfoss waterfall
Fontana Spa
Lava caves (Raufarholshellir)
Drive home!

Secret lagoon https://secretlagoon.is/

THe secret lagoon was tucked quite away, it was relatively inexpensive, it is in the most part a lake, with stones on the bottom, surrounded by geothermal hot water bubbling around.

Although it was fairly authentic, our children got bored quite quickly and we only stayed about 45 minutes or so. It was quite hot.

Gysir

Gysir is a great place to go visit Strokker erupts every 10-15 minutes, and there’s lots of other activity. crampons are recommended in Feb as the snow melts and turns to ice!

GulFoss

GulFoss

Gulfoss is a giant waterfall, on this trip the wind picked up which made it difficult to see, but its a huge expanse of falling water, so pretty amazing.

Ice caves and northern lights planetarium show at the Perlan, Reykjavik

Ice caves at the Perlan
Perlan interactive exhibits

Reynisfjara Black sands beach. vik

Black sands beach was used on the set of Game of Thrones, and is on the national geographic’s list of top 10 non tropical beaches. It has an amazing contrast with geometric volcanic rock columns which you can explore.

Blacksands beach, vik

 

Selkalandsfoss Waterfall

Fontana Spa, Laugarvatn https://www.fontana.is/en

Fontana was geothermal, but had smaller pools of different temperature, it also had a lake which you could wade into which was cold! They have a sauna and two or three steam rooms. They have a shallow pool (suitable for smaller kids), a deeper cooler pool, and two geothermal pools. There was plenty of variety for the children, and they could play in the shallow water, move to the deeper pool.

We went near the end of the day, and stayed for almost 2 hours.

Lava Caves https://thelavatunnel.is/

ice caves

Þingvellir National Park

Where the two plates meet

On this occasion we didn’t see the northern lights, but none the less we had a great time and saw new things. We mostly ate at home, we ate out about 2-3 times and the food was great.

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How to find great holiday deals (part 1) To find deals you usually have to be a little flexible on dates or duration. Pricing often starts high when first published, but usually drop once the season begins, after which prices only go up. To find deals you need to understand the rules to find deals, book at the right time, and/or be flexible to find dates where prices are a little less. Some advice: 1 week school holiday dates are almost impossible to find deals, look at perhaps 5 nights vs 7. 2 week school holidays and summer breaks are a little easier as there’s a greater ability to be flexible on what date you depart. Saturday/Sunday are often the most expensive days to travel, by using the tips below you can find options for your next adventure. How travel is priced. Without giving away all the rules, travel is priced based upon rules, these rules are often based upon departure point, duration, and whether it contains a specific day of the week. For air travel you will be competing with a mix of business and leisure rates – there are some rules which differentiates you as a leisure customer rather than a business traveller. One of these rules is whether there is a Saturday night in your stay (this mostly applies to long haul) Example Sunday 2nd Oct – Sat 8th Oct Monday 3rd Oct – Sunday 9th Oct You can see that including a Saturday night makes the fare substantially less. So how do we find the best fare? we need to find the best date, and the best duration. Fortunately there is a tool we can use. Google ITA Matrix. Google ITA Matrix is the engine which powers google’s flight search, and it provides additional features. Performing a search using ITA matrix. goto https://matrix.itasoftware.com/search In the above we’ve entered LON (as London all) and NYC (all of New York). I’ve entered BA in routing codes, as in this example I just want to look at BA flights. Select “See calendar of lowest fares” and select the start date, and duration. ITA will return the cost for your search for every departure day in October. You’ll see departing on a Sunday has a much higher price than every day of the week. The cheapest date is 25th October. If you are flexible you can also add flexibility – for example 6-8 nights. Now the 31st is the cheapest date, but only if you stay longer than 6 nights Packages Lets look at the flight prices for August 2022 – I’m using economy class as an example. and now lets look at hotels (the below example is from hotels.com) So flight + hotel = 623 + 1276 = £1899 Travel agents (and many airlines) offer a package combining both flight and hotel – online you can visit expedia or BA holidays or just call your travel agent. Here’s an example of the above as a package. BA flight + hotel result You can see as a package is this substantially cheaper £1899 (if bought separately) vs £1356 – a £543 saving. Pros/Cons of package rates vs booking flight and Hotel separately. Separate bookings. Flights usually are required to pay in advance, hotels may be payable on arrival or pay upfront also for the best rates. These bookings are usually non-refundable. Package Holidays If a package contains more than 1 travel component it is protected by the package travel regulations. Travel travel regulations protect you in the event of disruption. Your agent will usually be bonded or protected via trust also – this means if the travel agent ceases trading your holiday will still go ahead. You can usually pay a deposit and will only need to pay the balance 6-8 weeks before departure. The deposit is non-refundable. The package may charge you extra for changes, compared to booking individually so weight that up. Your cancelation terms will likely be higher too. Your flight will usually come from a “package” allowance, and that might give you less tier points, less airmiles (you will still get some if the flight offers it). If you book via a hotel chain you usually will not get points as these are only available for buying direct. So weigh up the pro’s and cons – for me to lock in a price and only pay a deposit is a big benefit, but I dont usually then cancel or change my mind. Package rates usually give you a significant benefit over non-packaged rates. But one advantage is that you can usually book with a deposit vs paying the full amount. Package rates are available as the airline, hotel or both offer rates which can be sold to travel agencies for packages, they have a limited number of rooms/seats for this rate. For more tips see How to find a deal when you’re flexible and when you don’t yet know where to go.

How to find great holiday deals (part 1)