My husband and I recently returned from a trip to western and South Iceland, including the beautiful Snaefellsness Peninsula. The scenery was stunning everywhere we went! I made note of some tips that might be helpful for others. here they are, in no particular order:
Before you leave home, download the Parka app (Parka.is) onto your phone. This is what you will use to pay for parking at a number of the tourist sites. It will save you a lot of time if you already have it downloaded; my husband spent at least 10 minutes standing in a parking lot with poor cell reception before he was able to download it and pay for our parking.
If you hear or read that it’s pointless to bring an umbrella because it’s too windy to use one, don’t believe it! I made that mistake, so we didn’t bring them. I really regretted that! The day we visited the Golden Circle it was was calm, but poured down rain most of the day. Our rain jackets were “water resistant” but not water proof, so we were soaked and very cold by the end of the day. Having umbrellas would have saved us a lot of discomfort.
If you visit Seljalandsfoss waterfall in South Iceland and want to walk behind it, don’t follow the crowd and go up the stairs on the right side of the falls. At the top of the stairs there are several large boulders wet with spray from the falls you have to traverse to get to flat ground to continue behind the cascade. This is difficult for people with bad knees or balance problems - I had trouble even with my trekking poles for help. Instead, take a clockwise route; cross the bridge over the stream below the falls and ascend on the gentler route that goes up the left side of the falls. If you want to continue and descend via the stairs, I think it would be easier to cross the boulders going uphill rather than down. If you decide it’s too daunting to attempt, simply go back down the way you came up.
When doing the Golden Circle, I recommend visiting Gulffoss before going to the Geysir Thermal Field, it’s only about 10 minutes further down the road, and you have to return back past the thermal field anyway. If you’re short on time or running low on energy, concentrate on Gulffoss, I thought it was much more awe inspiring. We would have liked to walk out to the viewpoint right next to the falls, but by the time we were there we were very cold, wet (it was raining) and tired, and it was getting late. If you’ve been to Yellowstone you’ll find the Geysir Thermal Field less impressive, but still interesting.
We never needed to change currency in Iceland, they accept credit cards and Apple Pay everywhere, even for purchases as small as a postcard or stamp. We were able to use our Apple watches for all of our payments and purchases - the only time I even needed to get my credit card out was when we checked into our hotels, as they wanted to have it on file. Most places don’t take American Express, but Visa is accepted everywhere.
We were surprised at how quickly our food came out at every single restaurant we went to, much more so than at American restaurants. Also, we weren’t given paper checks. Sometimes the server brought a card reader to our table, but more often we were expected to pay by a cash register station, and we simply told them what we had ordered, which seemed awfully trusting.
Everyone spoke English, there was no problem with a language barrier. Even most of the signs were in both Icelandic and English.
I seem to have reached the maximum number of characters allowed, so I'll make a second post with the rest of my tips.