155: Exploring Iceland: Tips, Tales, and Travel Insights

See the show notes for this Episode here.

This transcript has been automatically generated.

Bonnie Christine:
My family and I just returned from one of the longest and best vacations that we've ever been on. We spent just over 2 weeks in Iceland, and I feel like I'm walking away with so much to say. And so here I am. I decided to do a podcast about it for you. So many of you had questions about the trip. I also feel like there's a learning curve. There was a learning curve for me when we got there, and so my hope with this podcast is to share our experience and share what we learned. And, also, if you ever plan to go to Iceland, which I highly recommend, that I will kind of diminish the learning curve for you as well.

So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about our trip, and then I'm going to go kind of specifically through some of the questions that you all submitted. I'm Bonnie Christine and this is where all things creativity, design, business, and marketing unite. I'm a mama living in a tiny town tucked right inside the Smoky Mountains running a multi 7 figure business doing the most creative and impactful work of my life. But when I first set out to become an entrepreneur, I was struggling to make ends meet and wrestling with how to accomplish my biggest dream of becoming a fabric designer. Fast forward to today, I'm not only licensing my artwork all over the world, but also teaching others how to design their creative life and experience the same success. I'm here to help you spend your life doing something that lights you up. I'll help you build a creative business that also creates an impact, changes people's lives, gives you all of the freedom you want, and is wildly profitable. Welcome to the Professional Creative Podcast.

If you didn't see any of this, I tried to share quite a lot of the trip over on Instagram. And at some point, I asked, what questions do you have about Iceland, which there were many, many questions about Iceland. So first and foremost, why did we choose Iceland? This is a country that we've been intrigued by for a while. We've had some friends go and love it. We had planned to go over a year ago and had to cancel our trip. And so we rebooked for this past year. So I feel like we've been looking forward to it for, like, 2 years. So we booked the trip for June, and this is the best time.

It's it's the Icelandic summer. So it's technically the supposed to be the best time to go. Kind of June, July time period is supposed to be the best. And so we were there for, the first ish no. No. Actually, the last 2 weeks of June. So we pretty much stayed along what's called the Golden Circle. So there's something called the Golden Circle.

You can look it up, and it's basically a really great kind of trip around Iceland, where it shows you some of the most beautiful parts of the country. It is not the full loop around the island though. So the island is fairly large. I believe it's about 8 hours from one side to the other. So we did not do the entire loop. In fact, there are complete areas that we missed. We kind of stayed into the eastern side of the of the island, and we stayed along the Golden Circle. We changed locations three times, which is kind of a trick.

We love to go even if we're somewhere for a week, we love to try to change locations at least once just to change things up, see a different part of the place that we're at. So this one, we changed 3 and, loved kind of staying along this area. So let me tell you, okay. I don't know how to even how to even begin. So in the summer, there is something called the midnight sun. So Iceland only gets about 3 hours of nighttime darkness a day, and that's typically from midnight to 3 AM. And so I it it still isn't even really pitch dark even then. So it's light almost the entire day.

They call it the midnight sun. So this is not the time to go to Iceland if you want to see the northern lights. The northern lights are there, typically, from late September to early March, but it's a trade off because the weather is worse then. And so we didn't see any northern lights. We were there during the midnight sun. So my I kinda wanna start this off with just some, like, real honesty. So we got there, and we had read tons about Iceland in June, and the name of the game seemed to be Layers. So we showed up with Layers.

We had many, many layers. We had, you know, t shirts and and athletic wear, all the way to wool layers to raincoats and boots, and we were still a bit underprepared. So I think the weather is just incredibly hit or miss. But the first 6 days that we were there, honestly, it was some of the rudest weather I've ever been in. I live in Western North Carolina, where we have 4 full seasons, like proper seasons around the year. And I'm telling you that we may have 1, maybe 2 days like this, where I live a year. And the 1st 6 days that we were in Iceland, they were honestly brutal. So the high in Iceland in Fahrenheit for June is about 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

But it was also raining constantly, and there were 40 to 50 mile per hour winds constantly. And so our layers didn't cut it. We had to go and buy full full, like, rainproof pants, balaclava, like better wool socks, and, like, a raincoat that was even longer. It was cold, and it was brutal, and it was wet, and it was windy. And I don't mean just windy. It wasn't gusts of wind. It was like constant wind howling. Like, there were a couple of days where you didn't dare go outside.

Now, so we didn't see the sun until day number 6. And to so to be very honest with you, we, David and I, spent some time looking at flights back home. We almost cut our trip short. We almost came back home, or we almost, like, went south, like, tried to go into Europe somewhere just to get out of the weather. But the weather forecast promised a couple of good sunny days, and also everything we had booked was nonrefundable. So we decided to stick it out. And I'm so glad that we did. The sun broke on day number 6, and it was beautiful.

And so I'm not sure if this is accurate. If you're from Iceland and you know this is not accurate, I'm so sorry. But one of our tour guides told us that they measure sunshine in hours. And in June of 2023, they had something like 360 hours of sunshine. And in June 2024, they had 1 hour. And so I tell you that because my understanding is that it truly is just hit or miss. You could go and have incredible weather, or you could go and there could be a system coming in from Greenland that just means the weather is really, really harsh. So we had a bit of a learning curve.

We fully kind of turned a corner and our minds around it once we had better gear, and I'm so glad that we did. So there are a couple of things that I wish I had packed. One of them is that rain gear, like true rain gear, like truly waterproof pants, waterproof lace up boots, balaclava for your face, and a a toboggan. I had to buy a wool toboggan while I was there as well, and I had to buy better wool socks while I was there. This is just so amateur. What an amateur move of us. But we forgot to take any plug outlet converters, and so we had to go buy outlet converters because they're different. So know that.

Look those up, and make sure you take your own plug converters. And then the other thing that I really wish that I had had the whole time I was there was like some kind of house slipper. And that feels like such a creature comfort when you're packing, but my feet were cold the whole time. And we had days where we were just inside the entire day, and I was wishing that I had, like, my slip on boots or kind of like wool slip on house slippers. And I think that would have, like, just been a creature comfort worth packing. The other one is that if you're in Reykjavik, which is the primary city there, there's great food and amazing coffee. But 70% of the population lives in Reykjavik, which means that as you get out of town and get into the more remote areas, it's pretty remote. So there aren't many gas stations.

There aren't many restaurants. There's not really any grocery stores. And they there's not really great coffee outside of the city. So I have a travel, AeroPress and and coffee grinder that I love to take, and I didn't pack it for this trip. And I wish that I had because the days that we were far away from the city, kind of like, if you're if if you're like a bit of a coffee, you know, connoisseur, if you will, you might wanna take your own coffee setup. So some must dos. Like, I have several things that you just must do. And I can't pronounce any of them because they're in, Icelandic.

And so what I've done is create a guide for you, and I'm gonna put that over on the show notes for today's episode where everything is listed that we did that I just highly recommend. There were several hikes that we did that just were insanely gorgeous. Highly recommend the Blue Lagoon. That's in Reykjavik. And you can go and soak in the hot springs there. It's incredible. We did an excursion called Into the Volcano. It's my understanding that this volcano in Iceland is the only proper volcano that you can actually go into.

It's been dormant for, I think, just about maybe 4000 years, something close to that. And you have to hike about 2 miles to it and be prepared because it is windy and rainy. They said it's the rainiest part of the whole island, so I suspect that it's probably always like that. But when you get there, they have, like, warm coffee and hot chocolate and soup waiting for you. And so you ride down this, I don't know, device thing into the volcano. You you go straight down, I think, 400 meters, and then you get out and you get to walk around the inside of this volcano. So that was really cool. My kids loved it.

The other thing that I am going to highly recommend is something that surprised me, and that is arctic rafting. My friends, I am not a thrill seeker. I don't want to go rafting. I don't think that it's worth the thrill. Like, risk versus reward, I'm out. But I read so many reviews about this place, and the kids really wanted to do it. And so I decided to put my big girl pants on and go. And I'm not kidding you.

I think I had more fun than anyone else. So arctic rafting is so incredibly different than what I'm used to where I live. So it requires a wet suit, so you're warm, because the water is cold, very, very cold and beautiful. It's like that crystal clear blue because there's more water in Iceland than I've ever seen in my life. So all the rain, plus the melt from the glaciers, it's just, honestly, it's incredible. So in arctic rafting, you kind of get all suited up, and then you go out and do this run. And it's like the most perfect part of the river I've ever been in. It's one rapid after another, but perfectly spaced out, and the guides just have it super dialed in.

They make you feel incredibly safe. No one fell out of the boat the whole time in any of the groups that we were in. And so they just make you feel safe, and it's so fun. And you end up being able to get in the water if you want because you have a wet suit on in the calmer areas. It's so much water that there's, like, you couldn't touch the bottom if you tried. And so it was really fun. And to boot, you end this rafting experience with a hot tub and a sauna, and they bring drinks out to you. They have it dialed in.

And so we ended up having I took my 8, my 10 year old on it, and David and me, of course, and we had so much fun, so much fun. Highly recommend, probably my favorite thing that we did while we were there. Plus, it's just a beautiful way to see the island. The next thing that I loved doing was we did this hike. It was the last hike that we did, and it's pretty it's a pretty significant hike. It would it took us about 4 and a half hours. It's about 4, miles, 4 and a half miles long, but it is up beyond the highest waterfall in Iceland. So the altitude gain is pretty significant, but it's beautiful. And there are 2 areas where you have to take your boots off and walk across the river barefoot. The second one is beyond the top of the waterfall. So you kind of go all the way to the top of the waterfall. You go back in the river, you know, very safe different, distance, and then you have to walk across. And the river is shallow, but it's very wide.

And so it's a good, like, 5 minute walk barefoot in the glacier water. It's so cold. And I feel like it was just one of those, like, family bonding moments where we did it. We did it together. We got to the other side and booted back up, and it was really, really special. We also if you know David and I, we we are we do CrossFit. We love CrossFit, and CrossFit was really born in Iceland. Some of the best athletes in the world come from Iceland, so it was quite a highlight for us to drop into a couple of CrossFit gyms while we were there.

Super fun. So I like even though there was a bit of a learning curve, I feel like we're walking away from this trip with the best family memories that we've ever made on a trip. Even the bad weather, when it was bad, just meant that it drew the family together. And so we were there long enough to where we kinda shifted out of vacation mode, and we're like, well, we just live here now. So we went grocery shopping, and we cooked we really cooked every meal for the last week that we were there. There's no TV. I mean, there wasn't any TV where we were. So there is we played so many games.

We watched movies together, and read books, and played chess, and, just played. And, the last place that we stayed was on kind of an inlet of the ocean. And so at low tide, we would go walk the shoreline, and we just found incredible things and ended up just making the best memories of all time. So I absolutely loved it. I was just surprised by how harsh the conditions are. The people there are tough. They I mean, the Vikings are the ones who found it. Right? And so it's in their their lineage, and it's just like they're tough.

The kind of lay of the land is harsh because it's all volcanic rock. So there's not many animals. There are some Arctic Foxes and many sheep, and other than that, there's not many animals. There's also no trees very, very few trees because of how harsh the conditions are. And so if you think about it, that also means that there are no fireplaces. And I feel like it's a place where you really wanna cozy up next to a fireplace, but there's no wood to burn. And so it's just interesting. I think it's interesting.

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Someone said little kids or big kids? Now, my kids were 8 and 10, and they did great. They loved the whole experience. There were lots for them to do, but they can also kind of self entertain if the weather is bad outside. So I don't know about little kids. It would be dependent on the weather. Like, I I think it's so harsh. Like, if I imagined trying to hike in some of the situations we were hiking where, like, our feet were sinking in in in the mud, and the wind was blowing us sideways, and we were wet, you know, it wouldn't have been ideal for a 4 year old. You know? So assess your own situation and the time of year and the weather and what's on your agenda.

But, our kids absolutely loved it. Someone asked about plant based food, and one of my biggest delights was that they are incredibly plant based friendly. Every single place we went understood, like, they had vegan or plant based options on the menu literally everywhere. There was like if there was it was an equivalent offer of, non plant based and plant based options. It was the most plant based friendly country city I've ever been to, which was such a fun surprise. I didn't anticipate that. Was it crowded? So again, the majority of the population lives in Reykjavik. I still wouldn't really call it crowded, but as soon as you get out of the city, it's very remote.

I love this question. Someone asked about the toilets. I'm like, were they different? And I thought, that's funny. They really were not different. The main thing that's different in my opinion is that the flush buttons are on the wall, and they're typically behind the raised lid of the toilet. So you have to close the lid to flush the toilet, which is interesting. But, you know, no learning curve there. You'll be fine.

Grocery stores. So we did end up going to a couple of grocery stores, and I can't read any of the labels. Icelandic is an interesting language. It's beautiful, and I love visiting places that that speak another language. But Icelandic is not even one that you can attempt to sound out because the sounds of the letters don't match the sounds of the same letters in English. So it's very difficult. But everyone in Iceland knows English, so it's a very friendly place to visit if you speak English. They understand you well.

They speak English really, really well and, like, very well accepted there. So for instance, when we dropped into CrossFit gym, they coached in Icelandic, but they would quickly go over everything in English as well. And many signs are also in both languages, but not so much the labels in the grocery store. So I was definitely buying, like, things that I was familiar with, like produce and anything that I could figure out that I was familiar with is is what we went with. What do the locals eat? So because they are in the Arctic area and surrounded by ocean, it is fish, lots and lots of seafood, and it's really incredibly fresh. I would say cod is kind of their mainstay fish, and so it's very healthy food. Infrastructure is another question I got. It's great.

I would say one of the takeaways I had is that there aren't many rules. Like, I didn't really see any police while I was there. Now, I'm sure they're there. Because the flip side to that is that I felt incredibly safe, like, right at home, super, super safe, never once felt unsafe, felt like this country opened their arms and gave us a big hug. And so you'll love that. And the infrastructure is great. It's just that, like, where in the USA, you might have warning signs or, you know, maybe fences to protect you or, I don't know, things like that. They don't exist in Iceland.

It's more like, use your brain. You'll be good. But it was surprising to me, just the difference. Easy flight? The flight is not too bad. If you are familiar with flying, like, to that part of the world, It's about a 6 hour flight, and so it's a 4 hour time change 4 hour time change. So we had a red eye flight on the way, and it was pretty rough. So we got about 5 hours of sleep that night on the plane.

So, you know, poor sleep, but sleep. But our layover in New York got delayed by, like, 3 or 4 hours. So we were at the airport until 2 AM. And so it was a rough night. So some people will say, if you go that direction kind of to Europe or Iceland or or somewhere over there, to try to stay awake when you get there. But we were not functioning. We were not doing okay. So we landed at around 11 AM, and we got we went to our hotel, got lunch, and got checked into our room at 3, and we napped we took a 2 hour nap.

So we we napped from 3 to 5, got up feeling like a $1,000,000, went to dinner, and came home and went back to sleep for the night. So that was our adjustment on the day that we got there. On the way back, we had a daytime flight and, honestly, much preferred that. So we left at, I think, 10 AM, and we landed at 9 PM, in Asheville, which is where we flew back from. So not too bad. The red eye flights are just, you know, they're rough rough all the way around. Ponies. Someone wanted to hear about the Icelandic ponies.

So I hesitate to share our experience because I'm not sure that it's typical. But we did do an Icelandic pony ride, and we didn't we didn't personally love it. My husband couldn't go because they have a 200 pound weight limit because they're ponies, and he's just over that. So it was just me and the kids. And our experience was that the ponies seemed to be easily startled. And so we had a couple of situations where they were kind of darting and needing to be controlled. And we ride a fair amount, so we're we're pretty comfortable on on horses. It they do ride English style, so this was the first time that any of us had ridden English style, which is, you know, a quick learning curve, but it is pretty different.

My daughter didn't have a great experience. She had one of her, like, foot holsters, what do you call them, fall off during the trail ride, And then she had one of her reins come unclipped from the horse's, like, right side of its mouth. So she was one handed for a minute, and that's just caused for a moment of panic. Like the trainer leaped off her horse to go get Ollie's horse back clipped because you don't wanna not have a good control of your horse on a rein. And so, I don't know. I I the the horses, almost each of them at a different time, had a moment where they got startled and, like, jolted, and it wasn't a super safe area to have that happen. We were hiking or or riding along the highway, during one of them. And during another one, we were at, like, the top of a 1000 foot gorge cliff.

And so it made me just uncomfortable enough to not want to go back. But they're very cute, and I'm not sure that my experience is a good representation of your experience. So I wouldn't say don't do it. I'm just here to share, you know, what we did and our experience with it. Okay. Other questions, someone asked if Icelandic people are short or tall. And so their heritage is often linked to Vikings. They're generally tall and robust.

I mentioned this already, but some of the world's best athletes come from Iceland, which is amazing because it's so small. And so the people there are just very robust, hardworking. They speak English along with Icelandic. It makes communication really easy, again. So let's talk about money. The currency is the Icelandic krona. It is abbreviated as ISK. And so I believe that 1 USD dollar equals 130 ISK.

So it's not unusual for a meal to be like 6,000 krona. I don't know. It's very hard to wrap your mind around. So I never really figured out how to do the math. I would just convert it on my phone. Like, if something was such and such, I would just put that into Google and say, do the conversion, because it ends up being very kind of discombobulating a little bit. Technically, June is the best month to visit based on the milder weather and the midnight sun, again, unless you wanna see the northern lights. That's late September to early March.

But again, I would just check the weather. Transportation is interesting. So there's there may be something like Uber in the city, I'm not sure, but it's not available in the more remote places for sure. So I say renting a car is a nonnegotiable. You absolutely want your own car so that you can get out and see this incredible country and everything that it has to offer. And so I I can't see a way around you not visiting without a car. Highly recommend it. The car company that we used, I'm not sure if this is typical, but the car rental came with this little Wi Fi pack, which meant that you had Wi Fi with you in the car all the time.

And I think that that's probably because our typical cell service providers in the US don't have great reception there. They have some, but it's not super reliable. So being able to be connected to Wi Fi when you're travelling around was really, really helpful. Okay. The water, again, it is freezing. You're not swimming unless you have a wet suit on, but they have hot springs everywhere. So everywhere we stayed had a geothermal or proper hot spring to soak in. So while it might be cold, you can be in this natural hot spring.

It's incredible. The water that's cold is beautiful, stark blue, and they say it's safe to drink directly from the streams. Now you're not hearing me, Bonnie, recommend that. But if you Google it, you'll read the same thing. Iceland is known for you being able to drink directly from the streams because it's so clean. So do that at your own risk. Okay. I think the last thing I have to share is truly how beautiful this country is.

It is full of wonders. It's full of just awe inspiring waterfalls and hikes and rivers and fields and volcanic fields. It's incredible. One of my favorite things was just studying the natural kind of plants. And so I think one of my biggest takeaways is that in such a harsh environment, I would have assumed that the plants be harsh, that they be tough and very resistant. And to my surprise, they were so incredibly delicate. Everything was so, just ethereal, like, all the wildflowers were soft and and and whimsical and and just so incredibly delicate. And it was like, even in the harsh conditions, spring was here, and it was prevailing, and it was so beautiful.

And so I have lots and lots of pictures of the wildflowers there. I'll share some in the show notes. So I hope that that helps ease the learning curve for you and bring you some behind the scenes of our trip. Again, there was a learning curve. We turned the corner on about day 5 or 6 of our trip and are walking away with just some of the best memories that will hold, I think, for my entire children's childhood. I'm so grateful to the country for being so just open to visitors and for being willing to just like let us come and share in their beautiful country. So if you are considering going, I would highly recommend it. I'm gonna share more resources and locations again in the show notes. You can get those at professionalcreative.com. My friends, create the beauty you want to see come alive in the world. And remember, there's room for you.