Egilsborg Guesthouse — Hotel in Reykjavik

You know when someone refers to the term of third-world you-know-what-hole? Well this place is it. Formerly some kind of apartment, I assume, it has now been divided down into a rabbit warren of cells with walls so thin you can hear the fingernails growing three rooms away. Which is just a great feature in a place that is a magnet for drunk hostel-students and apparently Russian tweakers who have compulsive talking disorder and go takka takka takka through your walls all night... in some kind of lovelorn blabfest that went on for 12 hours. Well, with breaks for Ivan and Svetlana, the little semi-autistic babblers to, I assume, go outside and smoke more meth. It's in a great neighborhood... See the picture. Come armed. I thought Reykjavik was supposed to be clean, friendly and inviting. And, well. It is. And the Icelandic people are awesome. Everywhere. Except in this little third-world sewer pit of wax-paper thin walls, disconnected showers and an electrical system that would not make it up to code in Mumbai. I think the entire place is run of one electrical extension cord. Hello, Reykjavik Building Inspectors, have I got a rathole for you to inspect. Fire trap anyone? Staff is shrill and annoying. Everything costs. Show up an hour early to check in? It's extra. Towel for the shower? Extra. Soap? None. Did I mention the upstairs (shared) shower is full of Chiquita banana boxes and disconnected pipes. The shower on the second floor is on a timer so every 20 seconds you have to turn it on to get water. This place is the worst hotel I've ever stayed in anywhere in the EU/Scandanavia. It's not a 3.5 stars, unless you happen to live in a refrigerator box over a steam grate in Detroit. That at least rates 1 star for privacy and decor. This place should be shut down, emptied out, burned to the ground, the staff sent to the Gulag Archipelago to learn customer service... and the ashes should be sewn with salt Herring so that nothing, not even beautiful Icelandic Moss, will ever grow on this spot again. On the subject of location... to pick up where I left off. This place is nowhere near anything except Soviet-style apartment blocks and alleys full of fail. Look at it on Google Maps carefully... it's deep inside the Icelandic equivalent of a no-fly-zone. Avoid. Like the plague. That is unless you are an impoverished backpacking student who wants a place where you don't sleep and can stay up all night holding rap sessions and acting like drunken louts... Hey, there is a time and a place for that. And apparently, this hotel is ground zero of the time... and the place for this. Oh and, last, this place appears to also be the Budget/Avis/Hertz and Rent-A-Wreck of downtown Mumbai... er, sorry. Reykjavik. So there is a constant stream of transients renting cars that look like the wheels are about to fall off and which I would not drive to the end of my driveway, much less out into the hinterlands. Iceland is a great place. Beautiful. Scenery, museums, nature, amazing people. Fantastic food. Unfortunately, this place is like a giant festering zit right in the middle of a travellers...

I arrived within the check in hours, there is nobody there, the place looks and sounds like a building ground (see attached) which was not mentioned at the time of booking. I have to use my phone to call the owner (which is also fine, although it takes a while to active the roaming). The lady gives the door code over the phone, we go into the property, still nobody there. Call her again, she says go to room number 5 which is waiting for you. We enter and the room and it looks like someone's storage space - there are baby's clothes spread over the bed, including BABYS NAPPIES. No key to the room, nothing. At this point I decided that this is a bit too much and a reasonable grounds for not staying at this place (what else should be a good ground for deciding not to take up a room if not BABYS NAPPIES ON YOUR BED?). I called the owner after I found a cafe with Internet to what I thought was a reasonable solution: she accepts that this is a ground for cancellation, I book another place and we are both happy. At which point she became very aggressive, started to shout on the phone and did not let me talk and hang up (after threatening to report me to the police, not sure on what grounds o_O). This was a very disappointing beginning to Icelandic hospitality. Dear owner, ask yourself why so many people in their reviews complain about your...

The hotel wasn’t that bad, the lady who works there swindled and coerced me into buying a trip with gray line Iceland to the airport. Because of the way she went about it, I believe she, or the hotel, maybe get some type of commission or bonus for every trip they help them sell. This lady basically made me believe that gray line Iceland was the only option back to the airport. Right away she even “took the trouble” of “helping me” by getting on her laptop and ordering the ticket for me. When she asked me for my credit card, I reluctantly gave it to her, only because I felt almost forced into believing her and that it would’ve been awkward telling her I wanted to shop around. Later on I found out that I did have other options and that I could’ve even gotten on public transportation for less than half the price. I tried to get a refund directly through the gray line Iceland website, they told me I had to go through the hotel since they were the ones who had booked my ticket, when I did that, the hotel lady told me that she had emailed gray line Iceland but couldn’t get them to...