Since I was going to be in Germany for business for a week, my wife and I thought it would be great to take a quick 5 day "stopover" vacation in Reykjavik. We had seen the Home Luxury Apartments on several different travel sites, and decided to book our stay there through Hotels.com. That was the easy part.

The plan was for my wife to fly into Reykjavik from the USA on Friday morning, and I was to fly in from Germany that Friday afternoon. She would take a taxi to the property, and I would rent a car at the airport. We would then rendezvous at the Home Apartment Hotel. Well, it sounds like a simple enough plan, but things quickly fell apart for each of us.

After my wife landed on Friday morning and cleared customs and immigration, she hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take her to the Home Apartment Hotel at Skolastraeti 1 in Reykjavik. "Do you know where this address is?" my wife asked. "Oh, yes, of course!" replied the taxi driver. After an hour ride from the airport plus another hour searching for the address, the taxi driver gave up, turned off the meter, and called his HQ for directions to the Home Apartment Hotel. He finally found the address and let my wife out at the property two-and-a-half hours after he picked her up (and she was $150 USD lighter from the fare, too).

My own experience didn't go quite that well. After I landed on Friday afternoon, I spent over an hour waiting at the Hertz desk just to get the car. Apparently, it was "trainee day" that day at the Hertz counter (lucky me!).

While I think my sense of direction is pretty sharp, I was nonetheless worried about finding the Home Apartment Hotel and the corresponding address (which was not an unfounded fear as it turns out) in Reykjavik, so I spent another 15 minutes at the Hertz counter getting them to point out Skolastraeti on the map. They marked a very short street on the downtown ("Centrum") map that was abbreviated "SKS", and told me that it was my destination. Simple enough, right? Wrong! "SKS" on the map did not stand for Skolastraeti, but instead it represented Skogarstraeti (or something like that).

After that nasty surprise, I was left threading endlessly in downtown Reykjavik and hoping that I could somehow find the street. I had no phone number for the Home Apartments and no way to contact my wife to ask for directions. I was soon reduced to stopping at the curb and asking people on the sidewalk where Skolastraeti was. One man said he knew where the street was, but instead gave me directions to a major thoroughfare called Skolavordustigur, not Skolastraeti. Fortunately, I got lost on my way to that street (Skolavordustigur) and literally stumbled by accident across the Home Apartments Hotel on Skolastraeti. What a relief!

I write all of this to tell people that this property is certainly not easy to find, even for taxi drivers familiar with the city. Skolastraeti (I think it means "School Street") is a very short, one-way street right near the intersections of Laugavegur and Laekjargata streets in the Centrum, and is not on most maps. If you experience what my wife or I did, then your best bet is to simply tell your taxi driver to go to (or ask someone on the street how to get to) the Government House "Stjornarradid". You can literally see it and the statue out front of Ingolfur from the Home Apartments, and I think all denizens of Reykjavik know where this landmark is located.

Assuming you eventually find the property, you will discover that it is ideally located within walking distance of all the points of interest in downtown Reykjavik. There are two good grocery stores (the 10:11 and the Bonus) very close by, and many good restaurants. We found that the best restaurant bargain was the Hressingarskalinn, which is across from the 10:11 grocery store.

Our room at the Home Apartments Hotel was on the first floor. It was very spacious and decorated in a minimalist, modern fashion. It had attractive Scandinavian-style (of course) wood floors and cabinetry. The kitchen was fully equipped and sparkling although the oven interior was very dirty. The racks and bottom surface of the oven had a lush coating of crumbs from many long-since-departed pizzas. That aside, the rest of the apartment was very clean and cozy.

The bathroom contained only a shower, and this was a slight disappointment to me since I was really anticipating a long soak in the cool teakwood tub that was pictured on the website. The teakwood tub (and most other amenities pictured on the website) are for the penthouse room, not the standard rooms.

Two very small bars of soap and two packets of shampoo were provided in the room along with two towels. By the way, you should heed the advice about bringing everything with you that may be needed while in Iceland. These are not empty warnings, and ignoring them will cost you dearly. We ended up having to buy some personal articles (one bar of Dove soap = $5 USD and one small bottle of hair conditioner = $8 USD and one plastic hairbrush = $12 USD), and I nearly had a cardiac arrest condition in the store when I saw the prices.

The bed in our room was a queen sized Tempur-pedic type mattress mounted on a floor of gray gravel that had been polyurethaned. It sounds a bit strange, but actually was very comfortable.

The tap water does have a definite sulphur odor, but when you are on an island that is either a past, current, or future volcano, one should expect this. Actually, you get used to the odor in a few days and it is not really noticable after that. The best part is that there is an unlimited supply of hot water always available.

While this property has all of the positives of having an apartment instead of a hotel room, it also has all of the negatives of an apartment, which, unfortunately, I had forgotten about since it has been many years since I have lived in one.

There is no daily housekeeping or even "touch up" service for the room, which means you will be doing your own dishes and cleaning up after yourself. Okay, so that is not a big deal. After the fourth or fifth day, though, we began to wonder where we could send all of our garbage that had accumulated. It was piling up everywhere in grocery bags that we had saved.

Reykjavik is not a noisy city by most standards. However, this property is somewhat noisy compared to a standard hotel room. You can hear all of the foot traffic on the floor above you, and there was a permanent resident in the apartment below us who was quite fond of practicing her viola or cello or bass (plus breaking into song frequently) on most afternoons and evenings during our visit. There was also some sort of domestic dispute in the neighboring building (and right outside our window) at 4 am one morning. Additionally, some sort of maintenance work (hammering, drilling, etc.) was going on in the room above us one night until around midnight. Of course, it was still light at midnight so I guess the workers may have lost track of how late it was.

These noises were not a big deal, simply a mild annoyance, and if you currently live in an apartment you may not even notice them. If you are looking for tomb-like silence in your accommodations, though, then you should look elsewhere. You won't find it here. There are too many bars and restaurants close by that really get going at about 11:00 pm on Friday night.

The owner and the manager were helpful and pleasant each time we saw them (which was every day), and they were thoughtful enough to give us extra towels and pillows. They also graciously allowed us to use their private washer/dryer one time when we were desperately short of clean clothes.

Overall, we were pleased with the Home Apartments, and would stay there again. Sure, there were a few minor annoyances, but you get to rent a choice piece of real estate that is ideally located in Reykjavik. What more could you ask for?


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