"Swimming pool! Water wings!"
It was 40 degrees and drizzling, but my toddler Nina-Rose couldn't wait to plunge into the outdoor pool. My wife and I had taken Nina, age almost-two, to Iceland because it seemed like the perfect European getaway for a young family: an easy-to-access, utterly safe, child-sized country of fabulous natural sights and low-key cultural experiences.
Iceland is a terrific place for kids -- even taking the increasingly useless U.S. dollar into account. The island of glaciers, volcanoes and outdoor heated swimming pools, just five hours from the East Coast, has always been one of Europe's most expensive destinations. It's only gotten worse with the total collapse of our currency. But smart budget travelers can pretty easily turn Iceland into an affordable, fun getaway for families.
Little People, Meet Little Horses
For a place with only six hours of daylight in the winter, Iceland has a lot for kids to do outdoors.
We started our trip with a budget slam-dunk for little ones: the Reykjavik Zoo and Family Park (entry for adults and teens 450-550 ISK (US$7.50-9.16); children 5-12 350-450 ISK ($5.83-7.50); Hafrafell, 104 Reykjavik; tel. 575 7800; www.husdyragardur.is/in-english/). Reykjavik's zoo isn't like American zoos, with exotic animals walled-off from tourists. It's mostly local farm animals, and you can get up-close and personal with them, sometimes to a frightening extent. In one tent, it's possible to surround yourself with a giant soap bubble and stick your hands into a pool full of some very pointy crabs. In another, you're perfectly free to let a goat bite your hand off. That's typical of Iceland, where they have a much less litigation-obsessed attitude towards tourist attractions than they do in the US. And in my mind, it's great for kids -- as long as their parents hover behind.
The stars of the zoo are the little Icelandic horses, which kids can feed for free and ride around a little paddock for 150 ISK ($2.50); a major discount compared to the real riding tours at Ishestar in the suburb of Hafnarfjordur (Sörlaskeid 26, 220 Hafnarfjordur; tel. 555 7000; www.ishestar.is), a 15-minute bus ride from town, which start at 2,900 ISK ($48.33). (Families with older kids into doing actual riding will probably need to bite that bullet, as Ishestar offers much more extensive riding tours than the zoo's little paddock walk.) Nina-Rose, who's hysterically afraid of the huge carriage horses we see in New York, was happy to grab hay from the sheep cage and shove it towards the big, soft lips of the Icelandic horses, giggling as they munched.
The "Family Park" part of the zoo is a high-end playground, with a village of little houses, motorized kiddie construction equipment, and a jungle gym ship with extensive riggings; a thrill for the 3-6 age range. The whole thing is built into Reykjavik's largest city park, next to a charming botanical garden and a fifteen-minute walk from an extensive swimming pool and hot tub complex.
The spectacular Icelandic landscape attracts kids, too; the problem is tour prices, which now top $100/person for the most popular day tours. The best solution, by far, is to rent a car; small five-seat cars at Budget (www.budget.is) start at ISK 5,400/day ($90) if you rent online. Gas prices are above $8/gallon, but you're never actually going very far; to do the famed Golden Circle route, seeing the continental rift at Thingvellir, the waterfall at Gullfoss, and the Geysir park, you're really only doing about a 160-mile round trip.
Even if you aren't willing to rent a car, though, you can get out of town on a budget. We hopped a ferry for the five-minute ride to Videy Island, in Reykjavik harbor, to check out Yoko Ono's overhyped Imagine Peace Tower, a circle of marble plaques reading "imagine peace" in various languages with a white light shining out of it. The tower is worth about five minutes of your time, but Videy is much more charming; it's an uninhabited island of rolling hills and walking paths, covered in long, soft grass, with the occasional historic building or children's playground around a bend. The ferry (tel. 555 3565; www.elding.is/videy/), which runs daily during the summer and on weekends during the winter, costs ISK 800 ($13.33) for adults and ISK 400 ($6.66) for children.
Climbing Mount Esja, the snow-capped peak across the bay from Reykjavik, costs even less: it's an ISK 560 ($9.33) round-trip on the local public buses (take bus #15 to the Mogilsa stop.) Hop back on the bus for just a few minutes to soak off tired muscles in the Kjalarneslaug pool and hot-tub complex, which has a panoramic view of the mountains.
Swimming Pool! Water Wings!
And how about those hot tubs?
By far, the number-one attraction in Iceland for our water baby was Reykjavik's many swimming pools. Yes: outdoor swimming pools, with a toddler, in 40-degree weather.
Don't knock it until you try it. The average Reykjavik municipal pool complex includes five or six pools -- from a big lap pool heated to 80-something degrees, through a 98-degree warm pool full of chatting families, all the way to 120-degree "hot pots" inhabited by grim old men and a sauna for everybody. Grab some free water wings from the box by the entrance (they're mandatory for all kids under six), hit the pools at the right time of day (usually 3-6 pm), and they're all full of kids. At the big pool near the zoo, Nina-Rose met an Icelandic two-year-old named Olivia, who waded up to her and announced "Hoppa!" and then jumped up in the water. Nina responded, "Jump!" -- and they were off hoppa-ing for the next fifteen minutes on an invisible see-saw. Two hours of swimming a day led to a tired, happy toddler in the evenings, too.
The best local pool for kids is Arbaerslaug, a 15-minute bus ride out in the suburbs on the #5 or 19 buses. (Ask the bus driver where to get off.) Not only does it have a large indoor area connected to the outdoor pools by a water tunnel, it has a huge water slide, two waterfalls and all sorts of foam boat-things for kids to play with. Second place goes to the closer-in Laugardaslaug, the big pool near the zoo, just five minutes from the center of town on bus #14: another huge water slide and a pool full of giant foam dice ensured a pile of squealing eight-year-olds in the main section.
All Reykjavik pools cost 350 ISK ($5.83) for entry, and an equal amount to rent swimsuits and towels; the smart budget option is to bring your own swimsuits and towels. For photos and rundowns of all of Reykjavik's pools, go to www.spacity.is.
Coming In From The Ice
If the changeable Icelandic weather gets you down, there's plenty to do indoors. We burned off toddler energy at some of the many indoor play spaces hidden in downtown buildings. The main shopping street, Laugavegur, has plenty of kids clothing stores, but the real gem is Liggala (Laugavegur 67; tel. 551 8228), which has an entire mini-playground in its basement. Not that you can afford to buy anything there: a pair of Robeez baby shoes that are $25 at home run $60 in Reykjavik. The city's main library (Tryggvagata 15, tel. 563 1750; www.borgarbokasafn.is) has children's books in English, a fenced-off kiddie area with a play kitchen and even a bucket of Halloween costumes. Nina-Rose slapped on a witch hat and made pretend breakfast.
Older kids, especially, would appreciate the extremely high-tech multimedia museum at Reykjavik 871±2 (Adalstraeti 16; tel. 411 6370; www.minjasafnreykjavikur.is/english/; adults 600 ISK ($10), teens 300 ISK ($5), kids free), which surrounds a recently excavated Viking longhouse with a vast, dimly-lit room full of innovatively interactive touch-screens to tell the story of Reykjavik's first settlers. Early Reykjavikers appear as faceless "ghosts" on the screens as you wander past; Nina-Rose, a little young for the exhibits, was happy to scramble up and down piles of loose gravel while we absorbed the facts.
Speaking of Vikings, kids into that pointy-helmeted crew can go whole hog in a country intensely proud of its Viking heritage. We stopped by the Viking Village (Strandgata 55, 220 Hafnarfjordur; tel. 565 1213; www.fjorukrain.is/en/), a hotel/restaurant complex in Hafnarfjordur, an easy 15-minute ride on the #1 local bus south of Reykjavik. The staffer manning the reception desk was either in character or insane, alternately claiming to be American, Icelandic, Russian, Polish or a Viking, but his love for children was obvious; the hotel has Viking-themed but comfortable rooms and a restaurant with Viking entertainment, and they'll even arrange (for a price) to "abduct" you from your airport bus and feast you in their hall. Yes, it's Medieval Times-y, but in this case it actually was their medieval times.
Breaking the Ice
Our budget Iceland experience started even before we left, when we decided to go during the winter. It may be cold and there isn't much daylight, but it isn't that cold (usually a bit above freezing) and prices are low, low, low: airfares are half what you'd pay during the 24-hour daylight of the peak summer season, and hotel prices are a good 40% cheaper. Yes, Iceland is a bright and joyous place during the mild and well-lit summers, but it's also a lot more expensive.
I called each of my credit card providers to find out who had the best exchange rate, discovering that my Amex charged 2% over the common "interbank" rate, my Mastercard charged 3% over, but that my Commerce Bank (www.commerceonline.com) VISA debit card charged absolute zero for purchases or ATM withdrawals. Iceland hasn't switched to "chip-and-pin" cards yet, so all US credit cards work in Iceland.
Getting to Iceland may be the cheapest and easiest part of the trip. Over the winter, round-trip fares on Icelandair (www.icelandair.com) cost as little as $370 from New York, Boston, Baltimore and Minneapolis. Icelandair flights have little in the way of in-flight entertainment, but we brought the usual array of toys and tricks to keep Nina-Rose occupied.
The costs start hitting as soon as you land. Restaurants and tours are both eye-bulgingly expensive when translated into watery U.S. dollars; a cup of coffee is $4 at most coffee shops, and entrees at even the dullest joints can top $20.
That's why anyone traveling with a family to Iceland should only book rooms with kitchens. Icelandic food is generally dull and overpriced unless you're willing to spend $40 or more on an entree (there's exciting cooking happening here, but not on a budget.) We booked a room at the Hotel Fron (Laugavegur, 101 Reykjavik; tel. 511 4666; www.hotelfron.is), where studio apartments for a couple with a baby run a reasonable 9,300 ISK/night ($155) during the winter. Families of four can fit into their Studio Deluxe apartments, for 10,200 ISK/night ($170); one-bedroom and two-bedroom suites are also available. All rooms have kitchens. The Fron is as centrally located as it gets, smack in downtown Reykjavik on the main Lauagvegur shopping street, but most of the rooms are set back from the street slightly to avoid the raucous noise of Reykjavik weekend nights.
Just down the street from the Fron, at Laugavegur 59, is a branch of Icelandic discount supermarket chain Bonus, where prices are a bit less terrifying. We picked up spaghetti, vegetables, and sauce enough for two family dinners for $12. Eggs, bread, butter, milk and coffee to last us four days of hearty breakfasts ran about $20 total. Compare that to one cup of coffee and a croissant at the popular Kaffitar coffee shop, which is $10.
We did dip into the Icelandic restaurant scene a few times and found it wonderfully child-friendly. The brand new Icelandic Fish & Chips (Tryggvagata 8, tel. 511 1118, www.fishandchips.is) not only has high chairs, it has toys and games for kids to play with while they wait for deliciously crispy local fish dressed with 'skyronnaise,' a range of flavored sauces made from the local sour-cream-like dairy product. My wife, our baby and I split a hearty portion of pollock with rosemary potatoes, a coriander-lime sauce and a green salad for 1760 ISK ($29) -- a bargain in Reykjavik.
Practically across the street from Fish & Chips is an Icelandic insitution, the "Tommiburger" -- a burger joint so famous, it has its own street sign ("Burgerjoint"). At Hamborgara Bullan (Geirsgata 1; tel. 511 1888) they'll give you crayons and things to color while you wait for mouthwatering burgers on grilled buns dressed with one of nine exotic sauces -- what is the difference between regular and 'Mexican' catsup, anyway? A cheeseburger and fries runs 890 ISK ($14.83); they also make shakes. Avoid the many inferior "American style" burger places on other downtown streets -- Bullan is where it's at.
The country code for all Icelandic phone numbers is 354; to call from the US, dial 011 354 before any phone number. The currency is the Icelandic kronur (ISK), which is currently at ISK 60 to the US dollar.
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