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Marine Steve (spouse) and I don’t have a bucket list…or checklist of UNESCO World Heritage Sites… or a goal to visit all 192 officially recognized countries in the World. Our travel destinations are based around a specific culture, new experience, past visits, treks, hikes, snowshoeing, food and price! Iceland has always been considered “expensive” for Americans to visit; not airfare, but food and accommodation. And that is why we’ve never visited, until now.
A Spitsbergen Arctic Cruise left me longing for another cruise. It was such a joy to unpack once in a spacious cabin, slug down the included wine with excellent food and I particularly enjoyed the Midnight Sun; a novel experience. Quite a few ships sail to Iceland, around Iceland and even circumnavigate Iceland but after sailing on a suite-style ship, we were spoiled. If I thought one-week land costs were high in Iceland, I needed resuscitation after browsing Tauck, National Geographic and a few other options. United Airlines, our carrier of choice, also doesn’t fly to Reykjavik and there were no options to include a Star Alliance SAS in a ticket to Reykjavik! Trust me on this. (I spent many hours on the telephone with United Airlines. Flying United Airlines as far as Oslo is possible and then we needed another ticket from Oslo to Reykjavik, still on SAS.
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But I was determined to bite the bullet, visit Iceland and committed to Tauck Small Ship Cruising. The small cruise ship, L’Austral has an eight day itinerary which has sold out four years in a row, even with four departures in July. This cruise sails to towns, villages and islands populated by just a handful of people and visits Iceland’s main tourist attractions, e.g., the Blue Lagoon, Golden Circle and Akureyri. (More about ship and inclusions later.)
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map of L’Austral Iceland Cruise route
This was the easy part. Planning air routing and where to stay in Reykjavik was a long ordeal…
