So I recently returned from my trip to Israel via Iceland and I wanted to share some thoughts. I'm not going to do a full trip report, but I do have some pointers for people who might want some information about flying Wow Air.
TTTR (Teeny Tiny Trip Report): Getting to Newark was a little annoying, but once I was there, I was not asked
any questions when checking my luggage or going through passport control. It was weird going from the usual grilling that we get about the luggage and where and why we're going, to this. But I liked it
We sat on the runway for a while, taxied, sat some more... then finally took off more than an hour after the scheduled time. The flight (a red-eye) was a bumpy one, but I had my own row! That was awesome! About 2-3 hours into the flight, the pilot announced that there were Northern Lights that could be seen.... from the other side of the plane. I tried to look through the little window in the door at the front of the plane, but couldn't really see much.
We landed at the scheduled time, with one of the smoothest landings I've ever experienced. We hung around for a bit trying to find people to join us, so by the time we got to customs, there was no line at all.
@bluesky connected me with another frum woman going on the same flights as me, and we ended up finding two other people in the airport to join us. We rented a car from MyCar - Toyota RAV4, which with paying for a 3rd driver, plus gps, minus the small amount we were able to bargain him down = about $135. The car was new and clean and the rental company was great!
We set off, later than we planned to... made a small stop at a gas station/tourist center near Hveragerđi for maps and information, of which they had very little. They did have some cool jewelry and other stuff made out of obsidian and other volcanic rocks though. The guy at the tourist center directed us to the Hveragerđi hot springs (which technically it's redundant to say that because Hver means hot springs...). It had only just gotten light outside and it was still chilly so we didn't spend much time there. On our was back we passed some nicer looking hot springs that we had missed by just a 1/4 mile or so... but what we saw was still pretty cool.
We continued driving down the Ring Road, and stopped at Seljalandsfoss Waterfall (also redundant - Foss means waterfall. Iceland's cool like that
)and were about to go walk behind it, but then realized it's probably better to do it on the way back so we don't have to be wet the rest of the trip. It was a good decision because we got really wet!! Also, parking there costs money, but I don't know how much because we didn't check the first time, and then forgot to pay the second time! (More on that soon.)
While driving down we passed the Eyjafjallajökull Erupts museum but we didn't go in, instead joined the masses of people across the street a few feet down and took some beautiful pictures of the volcano and mountain.
We then drove down to Skógafoss, which you can climb up to the top and look at from a platform next to it, but we were short on time and all exhausted (red-eye flight, remember?) and it's something like 530 steps to the top.
Our next and farthest stop was Reynisfjara - black sand beach that also has some beautiful basalt and other rock formations. It was really windy and a little rainy, so we got a little wet, but it was still beautiful! There are waves there that sneak up on you (the signs called them Sneaker Waves) that we thought we were far enough and safe from, but then one huge wave started coming so we hightailed it back some 20 feet and were good.
We then went back to Seljalandsfoss, forgot to pay for parking, and walked behind the waterfall. It's incredible, very different from walking behind Niagara Falls. The walk is very wet and slippery, and probably shouldn't be done if you're unsteady on your feet. The whole walk from the beginning of the path to the end took us about 15 minutes. When we got back to the car, there was a yellow slip of paper on our windshield. Shrek! We forgot to pay for parking. We asked some locals about it and they said it's just a warning, not a ticket. (Hopefully they were right!)
Driving up and down the Ring Road is an experience in itself - there are Icelandic horses and sheep (the pamphlet on the plane said that there are 350k residents in Iceland and 450k sheep!), cute little towns at the foot of the mountains, random ribbon waterfalls all along the mountains, some rainbows caused by those waterfalls, and lots and lots and lots of bales of hay.
Having seen all the sights we planned on seeing, we headed back to the MyCar office, stopping at a gas station on way. MyCar gives you a little thingy to use to get a discount for gas, so we stopped at one of the participating stations... only to discover that you can only use their prepaid cards to pay. So we had to estimate how much money to put on the card. We ended up needing to fill up 3/4 of a tank (we drove about 450km), which cost about $70-75!!
After we returned the car, we took a shuttle back to the airport. It takes about 10-15 minutes to get back, but we were running late so we asked him to hurry and he gunned it - took him only about 7 minutes from door to door.
There was almost no line by security but we were stopped so they can go through our liquids, even though we passed through in Newark and everything was legit. We then were all selected for a "random security check" before we could go to the bus that would take us to the plane. My brain was muddled at this point because I had gotten so little sleep on the previous flight, but I think they were sending everyone without an Israel passport through extra security, before entering Israel.
Realizing now that my TTTR is not so TT after all... I'm almost done...
On the way back from Israel, we had standard security leaving TLV, but then were surprised by more security right when we landed in KEF, which we were not prepared for. I had bought 2 bottles of water in Israel and only drank one, so they confiscated my other bottle. For people who had non-sealed Duty Free bags with liquids in them (like alcohol), they sent them to another room for extra checking, but ultimately allowed them to take it on the plane if there were no other issues.
Okay, I think that's it! I wanted to add some pictures but don't want to make an imgur account... I did want to say though that you can get some beautiful pictures even if you only use a smartphone camera! Going to do another post with some pointers and FYIs soon.
