Trip Installments:

• Flying WOW Air
• Exploring the Capital, Reykjavik
• Golden Circle Day Trip
• Snaefellsnes Peninsula Day Trip
• Glymur Falls Hike

As we went into our last semester, my housemates and I were mostly looking forward the most to the weeklong Spring Break trip that we’d planned to Japan together. However, as we started the semester and started looking forward to our job offers, we also grew a little restless and I in particular was wondering what else I might be able to fit into this semester. I was budgeting to be able to stretch my remaining savings until starting work in early July, and still had a few hundred dollars to play with. Before this year, this amount would have only been enough for a domestic flight somewhere. However, there was an ultra low cost carrier called WOW Air that was based in Reykjavik, and their entire strategy hinged on getting you from point A to point B with no frills whatsoever. Their fares were extraordinary, and in late February they had a 2-day sale of 30% off all of their fares. I had been interested in Iceland for awhile, and this sale sunk the cost just low enough that I was willing to book. I picked the last full weekend of April for a prospective trip, because it was the last weekend before dead week and other senior year parties and celebrations would happen. I booked my tickets, which were around $282, to depart on a Thursday night and return on the Monday night. 

Since my housemates all have busy lives, I wasn’t expecting that they’d decide they had time for a trip like this. Since this final semester had a lot less schoolwork for us, I decided to pick my dates and then ask if they wanted to go on those dates. I asked them one by one in person, and as I expected they each declined. That night however, I was on my way out to study at a library and passed my housemate Jared playing Smash. He asked, “When were you planning on going to Iceland again? Not that I’m interested…”. Of course, this meant he was actually interested but I wasn’t going to try too hard to sell this trip. I answered his question and went on my merry way.

The sale was due to expire at midnight in Iceland’s time zone, which was 7 hours ahead of us. 3 hours before then, a history class that Ben, Jared and I all had together was starting. After I took my seat, they sat down next to me and asked about Iceland again. It turned out that Ben had been cycling through pictures of Iceland, and was surprised that any place could have that much natural beauty. Jared also loved hiking and outdoor exploration, and Iceland had some of the most gorgeous outdoor scenery out of anywhere I’d talked about going before. We chatted back and forth on Messenger throughout the class, and by the end they decided to book their tickets for the same price as mine, for the same $282. 

But that wasn’t quite all. Once we three had decided to book, we asked Joel if he was interested. He had budgeted most of the money he was willing to spend for our Japan trip though, so he declined at the time. However, after our Japan trip we hadn’t spent as much as he thought we might. In addition to that, we’d filed taxes for our internship and he’d gotten a lot of money back through his tax returns. So, we checked the airfare for our flights, and to my surprise the flights were still just under $400. That was good enough for him, so he booked and it was time for us to find a rental car and AirBnB together! 

We settled on using Reykjavik as our base for the four nights, and rented a car with winter tires in case the weather got rough. The AirBnB had two bedrooms and a couple spacious couches, so there was more than enough space for flexible sleeping arrangements. This ended up being important because we all dealt with the jetlag with varying degrees of competence. It also had a chair designed as a rocking cradle, which was wonderful to lounge in. The car’s winter tires got a little annoying for us, since there was a dinging sound that came on whenever you took the car above 90 kph (~55 mph). However, we did drive through some snow flurries and on an icy road our second day, and were extremely glad we had the tires then. We didn’t come up with a detailed itinerary beyond that ahead of time, but here’s what we ended up with.

For the flights, we had the following:

WOW AIR A330-200 Flight 162 from San Francisco to Reykjavik

Scheduled Departure: 10:20 p.m., Thursday April 20th, 2017

Scheduled Arrival: 1:40 p.m., Friday April 21st, 2017

Scheduled Duration: 8 hours, 20 minutes

Class of Serivce: Ultra Low Cost Carrier

WOW AIR A330-200 Flight 161 from Reykjavik to San Francisco

Scheduled Departure: 6:30 p.m., Monday April 24th, 2017

Scheduled Arrival: 8:30 p.m., Monday April 24st, 2017

Scheduled Duration: 9 hours

Class of Service: Ultra Low Cost Carrier

Since we had an afternoon arrival our first day, we ended up just doing a walking tour of Reykjavik, and then getting dinner at a local Icelandic restaurant. That gave us a chance to try local erm… delicacies… like fermented shark and puffin steak. Our next day we did the most popular driving loop in Iceland, the Golden Circle which features geysers, the Gulfoss waterfall, and a crater lake. Our second full day featured a trip out onto the Snaefellsjokull peninsula, which is where we hiked partway up a half frozen waterfall and adventured out onto the slope of a snowy mountain. And on our last day where we had an evening departing flight, we did the infamous Glymur hike. It was a spectacular trip for the length that it was, and despite some of the trials and tribulations we faced on this one, we all came away having had a fantastic time! I can’t wait to tell you about it.