kochleffel

I know that I'm letting the team down, but this report won't include photos of airline lounges (no access), flatbed suites (not available on any of my flights), or even first-class seats - on the Icelandair portion I bid for an upgrade to Saga Class, but the bid wasn't accepted, and Atlantic Airways is all-economy. I think that Flyertalk can survive without pictures of economy seating in 753 and A319 aircraft. There won't even be pictures taken over the wing, since I usually request aisle seats.

I started the trip by driving 299 miles to EWR. From my local airport there is a possible route to KEF on Delta, but I didn't see the point of flying the wrong way, to Detroit, just to fly into JFK, and anyway Delta's schedule didn't mesh with the schedule of Atlantic Airways, the national airline of the Faroes. I left my car with Corporate Airport Parking on Jefferson in Elizabeth and was in the terminal by 5:15 p.m. for an 8:45 p.m. departure. I checked in as soon as it opened and then had dinner at one of the restaurants in the departure area.

Icelandair boarded from the back of the plane, and with seat 39C I was among the first aboard. Two women traveling together had seats A and B and we laughed when we all pulled out antiseptic wipes for the arm rests and tray tables. A flight attendant was handing out bottles of water from Iceland as we boarded. Icelandair says that all seats have pillow and blankets, but the last three rows had no blankets - they must have been running short of either blankets or time, but anyone who asked for one received it. I am usually too warm and didn't ask. Service began almost the moment the seat-belt light went out and also started from the back. We all purchased drinks, but I didn't see anyone purchasing BOB food.

At KEF we deplaned to the ramp, from both 2L and 4L, so I was also among the first off the plane. Immigration there consisted of having one's passport stamped, no questions at all - a contrast to the UK where they sometimes seem to be trying to talk you out of staying. ("Why do you want to come here when the weather is so bad?")

It took 90 minutes for the luggage from our flight to be unloaded - a risk with Icelandair merely because all their flights from North America are scheduled to arrive at almost the same time, to facilitate interchange to flights to Europe. This left me with too little time for the transfer from KEF to RKV, the Reykjavik city airport from which Atlantic flies during the summer. That's how I came to have an unintended stay in Iceland: it was a Friday and there wasn't another flight to FAE (Vágar airport in the Faroes) until Monday.

If I were planning this again, I would start the trip, based on this year's schedule, on a Sunday, to arrive in Iceland Monday morning. There's more time between the flights on Monday, and if you still manage to miss it, the next is on Tuesday.

Through hotels.com I found a room at the Icelandair Hotel Natura for only about twice as much as I wanted to pay, which is actually somewhat reasonable for Iceland. At this time of the year I was probably lucky to find any room at all.

The Natura is sort of the RKV airport hotel, but it's at the opposite end of the field from the tiny passenger terminal, near the general-aviation facilities; from my room I saw lots of small corporate jets, including several Dassault Falcons. On foot it takes about 25 minutes to go between the terminal and the hotel, since they won't let you just walk across the field. Most of the commercial service at RKV is operated by Air Iceland Connect, to domestic locations and Greenland, with Q200 and Q400 aircraft. Eagle Air flies Twin Otters to even smaller places in Iceland; the three Atlantic Airways flights per week are the only commercial passenger jet flights at RKV. With the windows closed, there is no aircraft noise in the hotel.

kochleffel

Iceland has the reputation of being a particularly expensive country, and the low valuation of the Icelandic krona (less than one cent) underscores this, because the prices of things are in the thousands. A modest restaurant lunch might run more than ISK 2,000 and dinner could cost ISK 5,000. The buffet breakfast at the Natura is ISK 3,300 and, relative to other restaurant prices, is probably good enough to warrant the price.

One photo from breakfast:


I began Saturday with some shopping for lactase enzyme and toiletries that I had forgotten. The toiletries were easy to find; all were imported from the U.K. For the lactase enzyme I had to go to a pharmacy, but I was happy to find it at all, since lactose intolerance is not common in Scandinavia. It was a brand from the U.S. I spent the middle of the day walking around the city. I took only a few photographs, but here are two (of the same site):



I had a late lunch at a seafood buffet for ISK 2,250 and then went back to the hotel for a nap.

For Sunday I had booked a Golden Circle tour by Gray Line. "Golden Circle" is a made-up marketing name with no historical resonance; it refers to an all-day bus tour that includes Ţingvellir, the historic site of Icelandic parliaments, where the North American tectonic plate meets the Eurasian plate, resulting in many deep rifts; Gullfoss, a huge and impressive pair of waterfalls; and Geysir, with many hot springs and a geyser that erupts three or four times as often as Old Faithful.

From Geysir, here is something with a small aviation tie in.

kochleffel

I spent a good part of Friday afternoon, after checking into the hotel, trying to rearrange everything else. I emailed Atlantic Airways about the missed flight and asked about getting on the Monday flight; there was a relatively quick reply to the effect that the missed flight had no value, so I should just book the Monday flight on their web site, but they had preserved my return booking for the following Friday.

I also emailed Hotel Streym; after getting no reply within 24 hours I phoned. They said they hadn't received the email, but would have the room for me on Monday.

A call to the Avis agency in Tórshavn wouldn't go through, so I called Avis in the United States, through which I'd made the original booking. Avis in the U.S. said they were changing the booking to Monday, but when I arrived at Vágar airport (FAE) the Avis agent initially found no booking, then checked further and concluded that the Faroes franchise had rejected the change. There was no car available at Vágar but he found one at the city office that I could pick up the next morning. Part of the issue was that I had booked a largish car (by Faroes standards) and the car available was smaller, so the manager wanted to be sure that it was being rented to a party of only one or two people; a Kia Picanto, it would seat two adults and two children, but wouldn't have room for the commensurate amount of luggage. So I took the bus into town, almost an hour's journey including the sub-sea tunnel between Vágar and Streymoy.

The last thing I needed to change was a boat tour from Vestmanna that was booked for Sunday, but before I could get in touch with the operators, they got in touch with me, saying that the tour I had booked was being cancelled and asking whether I wanted to go earlier or later on Sunday. I replied that I wanted to change to another day and rebooked on their web site for Tuesday.

I didn't need to change any restaurant reservations, as they had been booked for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

The biggest surprise in all this came when I received my mobile phone bill. I have Google Fi and it places calls over wi-fi in preference to roaming. The charge for the call to the U.S., on the hotel's wi-fi, was $0.08. Yes, eight cents.

kochleffel

I arrived in the Faroes late on Monday afternoon. Vágar airport (FAE) is on a different island from the capital, Tórshavn, and with no car waiting for me at the airport, I took the SSL 300 bus after waiting a bit outside in the wind.

The bus, after a few stops including a rendezvous with the bus serving Vestmanna, arrives at the ferry terminal downtown.

From there I could walk to my hotel, which would have taken only a few minutes if I hadn't walked up the wrong street the first time.

The Streym is a budget hotel, with plain, small rooms - the singles are very small - and a decidedly casual manner. For a guest who has made a reservation over the Internet, the check-in process consists of picking up the key, no forms of any kind to complete, no request for a passport, no credit card requested, although they had the number from the reservation. My single room, on the non-view side, contained a single bed, a small Ikea-style desk with a chair, a narrow closet with shelves, one other small shelf unit (on wheels, but there was no room to move it), and a corner bathroom. There was a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, but no remote control for it. OTOH, the rate included breakfast, adequate but not lavish, and there was free DIY espresso in the breakfast room the rest of the day.

I had dinner that night at Seven, a Chinese restaurant next door to the hotel. Police headquarters are next door on the other side, but without looking closely at the sign, or reading Chris Ould's novels, you wouldn't know that.

florens

Wonderful! I visited Faroe Islands in 2015 and it was one of the best trips ever.

DanielW

An unexpected stopover in Reykjavik can't have been cheap! Worse places to be stuck for the weekend though.

AStarr

I took this route in the opposite direction last year - Copenhagen to Vagar to Reykjavik to Keflavik to I think JFK

I managed to score the saga class seats though which was nice. I've flown with them several times in econ+ and saga class. It's great if you score a good deal on it - not lie flat or anything, but I've noticed service with them is consistently friendly (or I just get really lucky with great flight attendants?)

I'll say that Atlantic Airways is one of the worst to fly with a hangover on though... but I love the tiny airport in Vagar. At Copenhagen, we were in probably the farthest terminal I've found. I don't know if I could find it again to be honest though I fly through there a lot on SAS these days. It was ridiculously far. That could have been the hangover though

I also stayed at the Natura - one of their massage therapists was excellent. It's a bit rough to stay there if you want to walk into city center area. There was beer tasting happening while I stayed there as well. I recall the restaurant needing a bit more staff in the evening as it was chronically slow with service and clearing tables and wait times of over an hour.