Sandra
An Exciting Experience
Susie Main, the operations manager at Nordic Saga,was most helpful as we made arrangements for our trip. Our flights to and from Iceland were uneventful . She booked our transportation to and from the hotels where we stayed prior to and following our tour. Our only complaint was that the second hotel refused to give us any kind of breakfast,even a piece of fruit,because we were picked up by the airport shuttle prior to the start of breakfast. The first hotel,on the other hand, offered to give us breakfast if we had to leave before the official breakfast time. For the first week,we stayed at Hotel Edda in Akureyri. The hotel was convenient to town (within walking distance). A beautiful breakfast was served each day and was included in our tour cost. We saw some wonderful sights; however, because our tour guide did not speak English clearly, we missed out on a lot of the history and culture of Iceland. Needless to say, we were very disappointed. Our tour guide was not at all personable. In fact, he rarely answered questions posed by members of our group. For the second week, we stayed at Hotel Hella near Reykjavik. This hotel was completely unsatisfactory! First of all, it was near absolutely nothing. When we returned from the tour each day, there was nothing to do; there was only one restaurant and a grocery store anywhere nearby. The breakfasts were unsatisfactory - very little was offered and that was not appetizing. For example, what was presented as orange juice was some type of powdered mix (tang in the US). We could not buy yogurt at the grocery store and keep it for breakfast, because there was no refrigerator in the room. We had to drink warm soft drinks and wine if we chose to buy any at the grocery. Hair dryers were not provided. The rooms were not clean. As you can imagine, the week was horrible. Finally, on our South of Iceland tour (the second week of our trip), we spent one day doing exactly what we had done on one of the days on the North of Iceland tour. To me, that was not fair to do the same thing on two days. Due to the inability of the tour guide to interact with the participants, we will not use Nordic Saga again. I think that with the amount of money we spent, we should have had a knowledgeable and well spoken guide. I also think we should not have been subjected to a third rate hotel when the ad for the tour implied that accommodations would be comfortable and adequate - definitely not the case at Hotel Hella.