Today was spent trying to find a place to stay in Reykjavik for our planned two nights there after we drop off the campervan.
Since August is the high season, we already knew from some of the preliminary planning we did for this trip when we thought about going this year that many hotels are already booked. We decided to go ahead and look at making a reservation to avoid missing out on the better properties that may still be available.
Again, we used Booking.com for our research into available places to stay. Our thought was that we will need to do some laundry after the end of our campervan trip, even though there are only three days left before we head home, so we filtered the available places to stay to include a washer/dryer setup.
Of course, this limits the places to stay to apartments, we have found that most hotels do not have washer/dryer availability in places other than some hotels in the USA. Apartments are fine with us, they are a little more expensive, but come with more space and other amenities that make them worthwhile. We also needed somewhere with some type of parking availability for our rental car, and that further reduced the number of overall places to choose from.
However, even with the additional criteria, there were several places to choose from. We generally sort them available accommodations by price, lowest to highest, and then look at the places based on overall ratings score from past guests.
The odd thing about the places we looked at that indicated there was parking was that the parking was listed as being “on the street” for every one of them. In addition, parking was for a fee, and that was where the differences stood out. Obviously, the street parking is “metered” usually meaning there is a machine where you pay and then display the receipt in the window of the vehicle. Some properties listed parking at an hourly cost of between Euro 0.70 to Euro 3.00 per hour, some listed parking at a daily cost of between Euro 10.00 and Euro 15.00. We were specifically looking at places within walking distance of the City Center, and that further reduced our available property selections.
In the end, we selected a one bedroom apartment property that was fairly new, both in age and in rental history on Booking,com. There were only three reviews, but the pictures of the property showed it was obviously new construction, it was very modern looking. All three reviews indicated it was new. Parking was on the street and listed as Euro 10.00 per day. There is a stacked front load washer/dryer in the picture of the bathroom, confirming its existence. The property is located within a half mile of the city center, and on a main bus route if we need that for transportation. The name of the property is the Grandinn Luxury Apartment. The total cost for our two nights stay is estimated to be $591.00. The pricing is estimated based on the current exchange rate for US Dollars and Islandic Krones (ISK). Since the trip is so far out in the future, we opted for the slightly higher, but fully cancellable rate.
Here is a link to the Booking.com site for the Grandinn Luxury Apartment .
The only downside we saw about the Grandinn Apartment, and that may or may not be actually true, is that the property is located out by the harbor, and not in the part of town where most of the other available properties were located. Most properties are southeast of the city center, and this is northwest of the city center.
There was another property that seemed to be located in the more common area of town, so I also booked that one. The cost was similar, and the parking was slightly higher at Euro 15.00 per day. This property is a two unit apartment building, one apartment is upstairs, and one is on the ground floor, both are one bedroom units. The upstairs apartment looked more appealing, but only the ground floor apartment had a washer/dryer in it, so we rented the ground floor unit also. This property is called Live as Locals Apartments. Here is a link to the Live As Locals Apartments at the Booking.com website. The total estimated cost for this property is $694.00, somewhat higher than the Grandinn Apartment. However, it had many more reviews and a great overall review score of 9.1.
One of the main reasons for selecting and reserving two properties was that I was doing this on my own, without any feedback from Stephanie, she was at work. When she was home later in the evening, we looked at both properties. While the Live As Locals Apartment seemed to be in a more popular area, it was actually just a bit farther from the City Center. Also, Stephanie did not like that it was on the ground floor, and some of the reviews indicated that the windows did not open for ventilation. One other item of concern was that the washer/dryer was a “2 in 1” unit, meaning that the washer and dryer are one unit, it washes first, and then dries the clothes. We have found from past experience that this is a very time consuming operation, sometimes taking as much as three hours to was and dry one load of clothes. we much prefer the flexibility of a “normal” split system, we can always leave a load to wash while we are gone and then dry it while washing another load when we return. In the end, we decided that based on some discussion and what we know right now about these two units, we would prefer to stay at the Grandinn Apartment. Again, this unit was fully cancellable until sometime in July, 2024. We will do a little more research to see if the location of the Living As Locals Apartment might outweigh the shortcomings we see and the higher price.
We don’t like to unnecessarily take units off the rental market, so we will try and make the final decision in the next couple of weeks, it is only fair to the people renting the unit.
We did also do a little more research and had some additional discussion on rental car for Reykjavik versus taking a shuttle from the airport. We have not made any firm decision either way, but with the properties we selected, we have the option for parking at a reasonable cost per night. We are comfortable choosing apartments with washer/dryer setups versus finding a lower priced hotel room, we enjoy the additional space and think we will really enjoy it after having spent 15 nights in a campervan.
We also discussed keeping the camper van for two additional days instead of staying the time in Reykjavik, but our initial thought is we will enjoy and need some campervan “downtime” before traveling home. That could change as we plan our routing for the time in the campervan, and if we find we need more time, we will look into extending our campervan rental and eliminating our stay in Reykjavik altogether. We still want at least one good night in a hotel before flying home, and so we will definitely keep our reservation for our hotel near the Keflavik Airport.
So, once again, we are making progress, but still have some final decisions to make before anything is final.
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