Kirkjufell Guesthouse and Apartments

We visited Iceland in late summer 2020. This sparsely populated country was definitely one of the safest travel destinations during the Covid-19 pandemic. And it still is because the vast majority of the confirmed cases are concentrated in the capital Reykjavik. Tourists have to do a double testing and go into quarantine after the first screening upon arrival. Everyone needs to spend 5-6 nights at just one place while waiting for the second test and the (hopefully negative) results. Therefore you will definitely want to choose a very nice accomodation surrounded  by beautiful nature and a lot of hiking possibilities, so you won’t get bored. We spent those days at Kirkjufell Guesthouse and we can highly recommend their apartments – the perfect place for quarantine!

Snaefellsnes, the “snow mountain peninsula”, has always been a favorite of ours. It is like “Iceland en miniature”. Besides the famous glacier volcano featured in Jules Verne’s novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth“, there are vast lava fields covered with lush green moss and berry bushes, an innumerous amount of larger waterfalls and smaller cascades, red cinder cones, lava caves as well as a rugged coastline with sea arches and spectacular basalt formations. And there is one of the most-photographed landmarks in Iceland the “church mountain” Kirkjufell. It has a triangular shape and resembles a wizard hat.

Kirkjufell Guesthouse is located right across the bay from this iconic mountain in the small village of Grundarfjördur, a 3-hour-drive from Keflavik International Airport. We stayed there at apartment #1. Modern, very spacious, superclean, with two bedrooms and an astonishing view. For the best rates you should contact the owners directly by email: kirkjufell@kirkjufell.net. The place was renamed not long ago and Google still have some troubles in finding their website, so please feel free to click here and make sure you do not mix it up with Kirkjufell Hotel (two different accommodations!).

The kitchen of our apartment was equipment with everything you need to prepare all types of meals. We had brought quite a lot of food from home in an extra suitcase, but we also found some pasta, salt, pepper, oil etc. in the cupboards. And since you are not allowed to enter any kind of stores during quarantine, the staff at Kirkjufell Guesthouse offered to get some groceries for us without any additional charge. So we used their service twice for fresh bread, milk, skyr (tasty fat-free Icelandic yogurt), etc.

After receiving our negative Covid-19 tests on the 6th day on the island we even extended our stay several times at Kirkjufell Guesthouse. At the end it summed up to a total of 10 nights and 900 Euros (100 Euros each and one night for free). A big northern lights show was in the forecast right after our quarantine and the weather conditions on Snaefellsnes were supposed to be best. We did not get much sleep then, but the nightly shows were amazing as you can see above (first image of this blog).
Isn’t it kind of crazy? Staying longer at the quarantine place on a voluntary basis… I think that tells a lot of about how much we liked it!

Tip: If you are thinking about traveling to Iceland during Covid-19 times and if your employer allows you to “work from home”, you might consider starting the trip with a short workcation. Even any kind of teleconferences won’t be a problem, since WiFi at Kirkjufell Guesthouse is really superfast.

Either way, we hope the pandemic will come to an end and things will get back to normal SOON!!!!
“Every dark cloud has a silver lining”