Cebu Adventure - 2017

Suggestions

• You can rent the flippers for snorkeling so don’t bother bringing them along.  Whale shark tour includes the snorkel gear and it costs about 1000 Pesos.  Try to get there early to avoid the crowd.
• When you try to get in and get out of the small truck that’s used for the commute during the whale shark tour, please be careful and always use the middle plastic footprint to support your
  
  self.  I fell and hurt because I was trying to support myself using my foot on the metal bar, got slipped and hurt.
• If you are a vegetarian, finding something to eat on the street side or in small restaurants will be very tough.  
• You don’t need to take the motorcycle ride to the Tumalog falls from the parking lot and it is in easily walk able distance.  
• Unless otherwise you are super sure about the path from Osmena peak to Kuwasan falls, it is better to hire a guide.  We paid 1000p+some tips for the guide to take us to the Kuwasan falls from Osmena peak.  Wear good trekking shoes or shoes with good grip because the path is very slippery during rainy season.  There are some shops on the way where you can buy snacks and water, so you don’t have to carry a lot of stuff to
  
  survive the hike.  The hike is mostly downhill and if you can find a walking stick, it will be very helpful.
• You don’t need life jacket to jump off from the top of the Kuwasan fall.  They have tied down rope for support in water at the downstream, so that you don’t have to swim long distance to rest.  Just keep an eye where the rope is before jumping off.
• The Cocoloco cafe near the city market in Anda is a good choice for vegetarians.
• Once you buy the ferry tickets in Tagbilarn, you need to pay the terminal fee at a counter nearby before checking into the ferry in an other counter.  No one will tell you this and it is assumed that you know this :-)  There are frequent ferries to Cebu from Tagbilarn.

My Journey

The immigration and customs are pretty easy and didn’t take any time to go through them.  Also, the checked bags arrived within 5 minutes.  Since we have friends waiting to receive us, I don’t have any advise on the public transportations.  I am totally

impressed with the cleanliness of the Cebu areas that we had been.  They were maintained real well and kept clean unlike what was showed in different Hollywood movies.  It may be true in Manila but I don’t know.  Even Cebu city is reasonably clean.

We went to the SM Sea Side mall and it is the best mall I have ever been, it is very spacious with a variety of stores with great decorations.  The lunch at one of the restaurants was decent but vegetarians have a few choices.  You have a number of restaurants to choose from and a number of European & American shops to burn your pocket.

Cockfight

After dropping our friend in the pier, we drove around the tourist places near the central Cebu before heading out to Argao.  Before checking into the hotel, we decided to watch the cock fight in Argao.  The cockfight is arranged only on Sundays in Argao but looks like the flight is conducted everyday in the Cebu city.  The entrance fee for the fight is 20 pennies.  The whole atmosphere was noisy and the betting on the cocks was between people, and could not believe that there’s a single fight broke out because someone didn’t pay the money or cheating when we were there for about 30 minutes.  People were betting between “this side” or “other side” among themselves without any intermediary and once the fight is over (it takes less than 2 minutes for a cock to finish the other one), the money is exchanged without any conflict.  Most of the flights that we saw were fine, not that bad, but in one fight both the cocks were badly injured but they still wanted the flight to continue..and it was really bad.  There was a lot of drinking and shouting at the venue.

What is Vegetarian Food?

We got out of the cockfight to check in to the hotel and to visit our friend’, Oona’s,

family.  We had a great time in their place but the funny thing is that they didn’t know what to feed the vegetarians and finally figured out to treat us with Salad, Banana flower dish with coconut milk and rice, which were very delicious.  Came back to the room to take rest and get ready to wake up at 4am to swim with the Whale Sharks the next morning.

Whale Sharks

Woke up at 4am to get ready to swim with the whale sharks in Tan-awan.  On the way to Tan-awan, we watched the beautiful sunrise and the drive reminded me of drive in Sri-lanka, with a lot of coconut trees and ocean.   The whale shark snorkel was very well worth it, we could swim very close to the shark and at one point the whale’s tail hit me.  They feed the sharks at certain time of the day so the sharks visit that area regularly.  There were about 10 sharks in the area where we were snorkeling and we were allowed to snorkel about 30 minutes.

After the snorkel, we visited Tumalog falls and it is very well worth it, if you have an hour to spare.  It is pretty close to the place where you snorkel for whale sharks.  We went there on Monday so there’s not much crowd and the atmosphere was so beautiful.  

Carlo, my friend’s brother, got a small boat for us to visit the corals in the Argao Beach Club area.  It was crazy to get on the boat without the life jackets and five of us jumped into the water far away from the shores.  Very nice corals and beautiful fishes but with that strong current was there, I got away further away from the boat while snorkeling and got panicked.  Since there was a strong current, we were all holding the boat and snorkeled while the boat was cruising through for more than an hour.  It was nice lazy

way to snorkel.  

Finding vegetarian lunch after our long swim was another story, we spent about 30minutes looking for something vegetarian to eat but ended up nothing (except in one place we found bitter gourd that we didn’t like to eat).  Finally ended up eating rice, soy sauce and egg - If you are a vegan, you are screwed.  But we were very well taken care by our friend’s family for our dinner and had banana flower prepared with garlic and ginger as well as vegetarian spring rolls, variety of fruits and rice that took care of what we missed for lunch.

Osmena to Kuwasan

Woke up in the morning 4am to get ready for the trip to Osmena peak and the hike to Kuwasan falls.  We left after 5am to catch the bus to go to a near by town, Dalaguete junction, and from there we took two hable-hable (5 of us) to the foot of the mountain. It was a very beautiful motorcycle ride and awesome view of the peaks.  It cost us 150P per motorcycle and the hike to the peak was not bad at all but it was slippery due to previous day rain.  You don’t need a guide if you are going to the peak alone.  After reaching the peak, spending an hour there and on our way down we realized that we needed a guide to take us to the Kuwasan falls.  So one of our friends, Allaid, went down to get a guide for the hike.

The guide was very friendly and told us that it could take about 5 to 6 hours.  It was

not a strenuous hike but a long hike with slippery path that we made it to the falls in less than 4 hours.  The hike takes you through remote parts of the island in dense areas of tress or bush as well as some small farm areas.  We were glad that we got the guide because there’s no sign or any one to verify whether we were going in the right direction.  All of us fell down at least once during the hike because of the slippery soil or stones, but the hike is very well worth it.  On the way, we saw cocoa farms, egg plant farms and different vegetable farms in addition to people working on the farms in old ways, just doing back breaking cutting with

sickle.  We started around 8am and reached at the Kuwasan falls just after 1130am.  The falls at the third level is not that interesting, so we continued to the falls at the second level.  

The falls in all the three areas are very beautiful and we spend all our time in the second level, mostly just being in the water, people watching or jumping from the top of the waterfalls.  The water and the view are so beautiful, and the whole area is kept very neat and clean.  

After chilling there for more than five hours, we walked through the first level to get to the bus stop.  From here, you can take the bus to Cebu or any other connections that you may use to reach your place.  Our bus ride took about three hours and by the time we reached our hotel, we were all tired to eat so went to bed.

Ferry To Bohol

Today is a pretty low-key day; we vacated the hotel around 10am to have second breakfast in our friend’s place before going to the ferry station in the 3-wheel bike.  The ferry from Argao took off around noon and reached Tagbilaran (Bohol) around 3pm.  When we went to ferry station, we were asked to pay 5P and we were happy that the ferry cost for about 3 hours ride is only less than 10 cents but happiness ended shortly after boarding the ferry.  The 5P is the ferry terminal fee and the ferry fair was different - 250P - still cheaper for 3 hour ride.

After reaching Tagbilaran, our plan was to check into the hotel and go for the firefly tour around 630pm.  But the plan got cancelled because of the rain. the firefly show won’t happen if it rains. So we took the three-wheeler to head to the downtown and that’s where Tony experienced the Cebu’s true appetizer experience by eating Balut.  

Chocolate Hills and Beyond

We left to the Chocolate hills around 730am and when we reached there, there’re not many tourist there.  We enjoyed our quiet time enjoying the mountains of chocolates (though wet and green) in the cloudy day.  It is called chocolate mountains because these mountains turn into to brown color

during the summer months and all look like mountains of chocolate.  To have a better view of the surrounding areas, you have to climb a number of steps to reach small hill.  The next stop was the Tarsiers sanctuary, which is maintained and kept well with caretakers of the Tarsiers.  Tarsiers are much smaller than what I imagined off and their body length is less than one fourth of their tail length.  Since they are nocturnal animals, most of them were sleeping and only a few of them could be spotted with their eyes open.  After taking a few pictures at the Man Made Forest, we decided to do the zip lining over the Loboc River and even

though the safety of that was a concern, I didn’t bother to mention about it to anyone.  We enjoyed (almost) flying over the Loboc River about 250 feet high.

The lunch was at the Loboc river cruise with some local music and dance.  It was nice ride on the river with some good food if you eat meat, else, just eat fruits and enjoy the views.  Still we got a lot of time to spend in the day so our friend Carlo took us to the python zoo that I really didn’t want to go because the way most of these places treat the animals there.  We took a quick walk before decided head to Anda.  

Anda

The bus ride was not bad and it took us about 2 hours to reach Anda, and we drove along the ocean to reach Anda.  The hotel that we booked, Anda de Boracay, was fine but not great.  The food sucked big time and the hot pool is not even close to being warm, but the location was great.

We started the day early and went to a couple of cave pools before spending most of our morning in the Kaligoon cave bool.  It is well kept and less crowded when we reached there.  We really enjoyed jumping from the top of the cave a couple

of times before booking two pump boats to head out for snorkeling.  We visited a few caves where they use to cremate or bury the humans in 1800s before snorkeled in the marine sanctuary and then came back to the city for lunch around 3pm.   The lunch at the Cocoloco Cafe was very good.  We tried to relax in the hot pool but it was pretty cold to chill on a windy evening.  We retired to our rooms early hoping that we could wake up early to watch the sunrise, but we didn’t bother to wake up early for the sunrise.

Cebu City

Man Made Forest in Bohol

The movie that was played in the ferry is not appropriate for any kids below 18 years of age, a lot of violence and nudity. We were surprised to find that there’s Uber in Cebu city, which made our lives easier to get back to the hotel from the ferry terminal.  After dropping off of our bags in the hotel, we headed out to the mall close by for lunch.  Looks like most of the malls in the Cebu are big and nice open area in the middle of the mall to walk around among the trees or nice flowers.  We spent a lot of time in the mall walking around and making videos for the upcoming Tony’s series “Tony’s Adventures - Cebu” before going to the Colon Street to check

out what it got to offer (against advise of the hotel personal because that area is not supposed to be safe).  Colon street is nothing interesting but a number of platform shops and a lot of crowd, but we felt perfectly safe.  We left that place in about 30 minutes and one of the craziest things happened first time in my Uber experience is that we got the same Uber that we took to come to Colon street to return back to our hotel.

Overall

Thanks to Oona’s family for taking care of us when we were there, especially Carlo, Oona’s brother, we spent the seven days with us making sure that we stay alive and get fed on time :-)  Also Yayen, Oona’s cousin, who took a great care of us during our stay taking care of the logistics.  We felt pretty safe in Cebu and we spent no time at night walking around to different places.  

If you like beach and water, it is the place.  Being a vegetarian sucks but if you book a place with a kitchen, you can really enjoy a lot.  It is a less expensive place to have a lot of fun in the water.  Most of the people speak English and they are very friendly, so moving around is not an issue with a lot of public buses operating all over the place.

Videos:

Andaman Islands - 2017 Family Trip

Suggestions

• Book the ferry tickets as soon as you know of your plans and it is difficult to get during the peak season for the timings of your choice.  Since I didn’t book in advance, I had to waste about an hour going to a travel agent to book the tickets.  We couldn’t get the morning ferry to
  
  go to Havelock, so got the afternoon ferry.
• It is more economical and better to do introductory scuba in Havelock than in North Bay.  It costed us 3500 rupees in North Bay but it was only 2000 rupees in Havelock.
• If you plan in advance, book the Dolphin resorts in Havelock and it is the best value for the money.  
• The Radhanagar beach is an awesome place to chill and swim.  It is not deep as well as no currents, so you can go much deeper in the water for a swim.  Compared to beach No. 5 area where the Dolphin resort is located, it is not that scenic (it is on the east side).  But if you want to spend a lot of time swimming and be in the water, go to Radhanagar beach but all of the water activities happen near the beach No. 5 area.
• The beach no. 5 area is really scenic and the water is very shallow for about quarter of a mile.  Nice area to walk around, sun bath but there are no waves.  If you have your own snorkeling gear, you should bring it with you to this area to snorkel.

  

  Radha Nagar Beach

• Hotels in Andaman get booked pretty early, so to get the best location, please plan in advance.  Havelock island is a nice place to relax and it is still not developed much which is a good thing (compared to other beach resorts).
• You are not allowed to carry liquor in the ferry, from Port Blair to Havelock.  But there’s no check on the other direction.
• After 30 minutes or so, get up to the top deck in the ferry to see a lot of people dancing for the loud music and plan to enjoy the party.

  

  Kalapather Beach

• There’s a pure vegetarian restaurant in the Radhanagar beach (in the beach itself) which is really nice.  It is the only pure vegetarian place there.
• It gets dark by 530pm, so plan your day accordingly.

My Journey

Starting Trouble

The flight got delayed more than 2 hours due to some technical issues and we were moved to a different plant after sitting the flight for an hour.  Even with the flight long flight delays, Indigo didn’t offer any snacks or meal  because it was during the lunch time but they were kind enough to offer water.

Immigration at Port Blair

Since i read about immigration for the foreigners in Andaman, I realized that I need to do some formalities before getting out of the airport.  There’s no one stopping the foreigners and advising them to get immigration done, but they the passports on the return trip.  It is a quick process and the officers were extremely friendly and helpful.

We pre-arranged a car and the drive, Sarath, was there to take us to the hotel.  It is better to browse and book for hotel hotels India specific sites because Booking.com has very limited supply and the

Corbyn's Cove

hotel that we got is not that great.  Also, if you have a contact or travel agent ask them for hotel advise.  I went through Kumar and he’s pretty professional for car services (I booked hotels through online), his information:  Blue Sea Tours & Travels, 9476045145.

Spent the first day going to the Corbyn’s Cove beach and the marina park.  Since it was new year, all these places were packed with people.  The beach seems to be a nice place to swim but there’re signs of crocodile warning everywhere, that make me think

Corbyn's Cove

twice before getting in the water.  After spending a lot of time in the beach walking around, went to the marina park to walk around.  With the number of people around there, that place is kept reasonably clean.   Had dinner int he Green Park restaurant which was ok.

The next day, we went on a day long cruise to Viper island and North Bay.  If you are not planning to do any water activities, don’t bother going on the tour to North Bay.  There is nothing much to do in North Bay other than water activities.  We did introductory scuba and it was good.

Viper Island

After we returned, we went to the Sound and Light show in the Cellular Jail and it was good.  After that we had dinner in the Vegan Creek restaurant at the Blue Sea Hotel, the food sucked and the service sucked worse than the food.

Our ferry to Havelock was at noon, so we took the tour of the saw mill, naval marine museum and tour of the Cellular jail before heading to the ferry dock.  The naval marine museum was good and it has small aquarium, tribe

Cellular Jail

history and coral/shell displays.  More educational that what I expected and it was good.  The saw mill is not that great.  The Cellular Jail didn’t have any English speaking guides available that day, which sucked.  Since we saw the light and sound show the previous day, it provided good background to the visit.  

By the time that we checked in to our rooms, it started to get dark so we took a short stroll in the beach and after that we walked to Cocoa Anju restaurant for dinner - the ambience and the food was good but it is on the expensive side.  The next day, when we were ready to

go to the Kalapather beach it started rain, but we left to the beach anyway by taxi.  Since it was raining there’s not much crowd there and we spend about an hour there before heading to the Radhanagar beach.

The drive to Radhanagar beach was nice but in a narrow muddy road.  There are a lot of eating places in that area and has very good showering/change room facilities.  We spent a lot of time swimming in there before heading back to the hotel.  We made the arrangements to go for the board dive next day morning at 6am.

This is one of my very few inactive vacations and we basically lazed around the beach the whole day.  The only active thing that we did were board dive with Underwater Tribe, who took us about a mile into the ocean to dive.  Since there was heavy rain in the previous night, the visibility was not that great but we really enjoyed the dive.  We felt better diving in the middle of ocean than just walked to dive in the North Bay. 

On our fourth day, we returned to Port Blair and just relaxed in the

room.  The other option we had was to drive 25 miles to another beach that we decided not to go because it looked like it was going to rain.  Surely, it rained a lot in the evening.

Summary

Overall, it was a nice relaxing vacation and Andaman has a lot to offer in terms of the scenic beauty and activities.  If we had more time, we would have gone for PADI certification there.

Quick Winter Trip to Iceland 2017

Suggestion

• If you are arriving Reykjavik after 10pm during winter, keep an eye out when you are about to land, you may be lucky to witness northern lights.  I was not that lucky but a few fellow travelers in a different flight were able to see the norther light
• The shuttle buses leave 30-45minutes after every flight landings in the early morning hours to the town.  
• If you are arriving early in the morning and hungry, have something before entering into the baggage area.  You have better food choices after the immigration and also, you don't have to pay taxes in this area.
  
• I am not a fan for arranged tours but in winter, it is the best choice if you want to be less stressful.  Initially I wanted to rent a car and drive, but looking the snowfall and the roads, I am glad that I didn’t rent.  Saw a few cars on the side of the road.  This is true for a solo traveler, but if you are going in a group and more time in hand, you can take risk driving on your own (but look at the weather forecast before you take on this adventure….and assuming that you have some winter driving experience).
• There are a number of companies that do multi day tours and the south beach area is pretty awesome.  If you have more days, do the south beach to experience the power of the ocean and enjoy the ice caves.
• Get used to the high prices - for example, not a great soup costs about $13 and burger & fries cost about $25.
• If you are vegetarian, you have to learn to get the best out of what is available.  In the city of Vik, I found veggie burger and in most of the other places there’s not much choice.  I managed with the egg sandwich or bought vegetarian sandwiches in the grocery shops before heading out of Reykjavik.  You have a lot of places to enjoy vegetarian food in Reykjavik.

  

  At Secret Lagoon

• Blue Lagoon is nothing but a hype and I didn’t enjoy it as much as the “Secret Lagoon” (the tour companies take you there…costs about half the price of BL) that had really hot spring water where as the BL had nice ambiance, spa but warm water.  Felt like I was in an outdoor heated pool.  If you really want to enjoy the hot springs with hot water, go to SL.
• If you still want to go to Blue Lagoon, book it in advance and it will be hard to get a slot available at the last minute.  It can be easily done on your way to the airport assuming that your flight leaves after 1pm.
• Liquor is lot cheaper in the duty free and even on your way back, you can get the mini wine bottles for cheap..hint for whoever flying with WowAir.
• It is cheaper to eat in the airport before the customs area where you don’t pay tax.  You can save a dollar on a cup of latte.
  
• Bring waterproof pants and rain jackets if you are planning to take the two day tour to the south beach because on the way you will be visiting the waterfalls Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss where you will surely get wet even if there is no rain.  Also, take the hot pockets to warm up your toe and hands, when you standing in the open space at the middle of the night with sub-zero temperature, it will be very helpful.  Even with very good winter gear, I was freezing.
• You can look at the forecast for the northern lights before booking the tour:  http://www.northernlightsiceland.com/northern-lights-forecast/
• Download this iPhone app to take pictures of the northern lights and it does a decent job: Northern Lights Photo Taker

  

  Picture Taken with the App

• WowAir is simply amazing with more leg room and on-time service.  Pack enough water and food because there’s nothing free in the flight.  But the ticket prices are amazing.
• Your smart phone shuts down even if there’s enough battery because of the cold weather so please be aware of it if you are planning to take pictures with your smart phone
• I found the Viator tours are less expensive for the Golden Circle and don’t see any reason to pay premium for this tour because it is going to take you to the three main places.
• In some of the hotels or hostels, if you pre-book the breakfast, you get a better deal. Check it out and plan accordingly

My Journey

Arrived around 4am and decided to hang around in the airport ’till 7am because of the free wifi as well as better seating.  The seats are better before the customs area than in the baggage area.  Since I had pre-booked my two day tour for the same day of arrival, I decided to take a latter shuttle to the BSI bus terminal where I would be picked up by 9am.  I didn’t see any reason to go to the hotel to take rest because I decided that I could sleep in the van which worked out pretty good.  I booked the two day south beach tour with Extreme Island that I am happy with and they picked me from the bus terminal around 915am.

South Beach

On the way to the South Beach after Seljalandsfoss

Once we left the Reykjavik, it started to snow heavily and it was still snowing heavily when we reached the Seljalandsfoss falls.  With the wind, snow and the cold, it was pretty bad walking behind the falls and I am glad that I had waterproof pants & rain jacket.  I saw some people walking around with jeans and suffering a lot because of the chillness.  I am glad that we done with the worst weather at the beginning of the trip and the weather started get better once we started to go south.  We stopped in the same place, Seljalandsfoss, on our way back during the twilight hours, there is flood lights set up there but it was nothing great ..been told that it looks better in the complete darkness.

Skogafoss

Our second stop was Skogafoss and it was pretty nice.  Our guide, Johannes, advised us not to climb the side of the waterfall to see the view because the falls look better from down than that from the top.  And our next stop was the south beach and we were warned multiple times about the waves there.  Surely, it is so powerful and pretty high waves.  In addition to the black sand beach, Reynisfjara, the basalt rock formations and the formations of the caves on the beach are pretty interesting.  Looking at them, you may think that it is man made but surely it is not.  The Troll family rock formations in the ocean is pretty nice and the waves are hitting them hard, wondered how they managed stay without getting crumbled.

Then we started to going towards the farm house where we were staying that night and on our way we stopped to see the lava fields.  It felt like we were in a different planet with the moss growing on the lava rocks and they looked like miles and miles of large green color mushrooms.

I was able to take a couple of power naps during the drive and picked up some vegetarian sandwiches on the way to the farm house for dinner.  Instead of having dinner at a later time, I decided to have dinner early and go to bed (because the weather was bad, there is no chance of northern light that night).  The accommodation was very good and the breakfast was typical continental breakfast.

The next day morning, we left to explore the ice caves and this can be done only during the winter times.  The experience of inside the cave, seeing different glacier colors and the water holes in the cave is magical.  There’s a huge waterhole where everyone was shoving there head inside to take the “frozen” pictures.  Outside the caves, it was very cold and windy, and once you are inside the cave, it was very nice.  After the ice caves, we headed to Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon to view the broken glaciers floating to the ocean and to see the iceberg graveyard.  Except one small piece of ice berg, there’s nothing floating towards the ocean but all frozen up.  Different shapes and colors of the icebergs was totally worth making the trip to the south beach.  The view of the ice bergs scattered over the black sand beach is crazy.

On our trip back to Reykjavik, we stopped a couple of places where some of the movies were filmed and watched sunset near the Reynisfjara beach.  The plan was to have the dinner at the Viking restaurant and hunt for northern lights around 9pm.  The vegetarian dinner at the Viking restaurant sucked pretty bad, the soup was nothing but a salt water and regret eating there.  The hunting for the northern lights was a bone chilling experience, it was on the side of the highway, it was very windy and sub-zero temperature.  We saw the northern lights but it is not a great one, it was light green because the particles were not interacting with the oxygen so it was a week color. Thought that i was the only one who was freezing but when I went back to the van, I saw most of the fellow travelers trying to warm themselves before heading out again to see the northern

lights.  We waited for some excited particles but nothing got excited that night :-)  I got dropped at the hostel around 1130pm.  

Golden Circle 

I booked the Golden circle and the secret lagoon tour wth the Arctic Adventures to leave at 9am, so I was trying to get some sleep before the next busy day.  The Arctic Adventures is not that great because the tour guide was not providing that much of information on the places that we visited.  We visited the Thingvellir National Park, Gullfoss and then the geyser.  The Geyser is nothing great if you had been to Yellowstone but the other two places are very nice and not really sure why need to spend a whole day visiting them.  We left Reykjavik at 10am and we were done with all these three places by 3pm without rushing through.  The only thing was the

tour guide dropped us in one place and picked us up in a place where the walking tour ends so that we didn’t have spend time walking back.  After the Geyser, we went to the secret lagoon and spend about an hour there.  It was very well worth it.  We were back to the town by 730pm.  I was craving for some spicy food, luckily there was a Thai place closer to my hostel where I had my dinner which was really good.

I was trying to get to sleep early, but one of the guys in the hostel room was making so much noise packing and unpacking at 11pm.  Finally I managed to sleep around mid-night to wake up early morning to get ready to go the Blue Lagoon on my way to the airport.

Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon has a nice ambiance to relax and get spa treatment but the water temperature is warm not hot.  If you are looking for a place to take nice pictures to impress your friends, it is the place.  They provide the lockers for the small hand luggages, all you need to bring to this place is swim wear and a towel.  If you don’t have the towel, you can rent it.  Since the water is not hot, you can stay in the water as long as you want.  There’s steam room and sauna room to relax too in the pool area.  The ride to the airport takes about maximum of 30 minutes.

Overall

Iceland is a very beautiful country.  It is not vegetarian friendly outside Reykjavik and it is expensive.  I will surely go there again in summer.

Plan your trip with couple of friends or family members so that it'd be calculated risk to rent and drive around during winter. 

Always check the WowAir fares, you get fantastic deals.  

The hostel (Hlemmur Square) that I stayed in is pretty nice and very close to a number of restaurants.  I didn't walk around the city but the city looked very nice to walk around.