Grand hotel is a bit far from the center of Reykjavik. You need to depend on taxis and/or shuttles, unless you want to spend 20 minutes or so walking along a busy road.

The hotel itself is clean with nice, modern decor and spacious rooms - also a very attractive lobby/bar/reception. How ever the bathrroom is not very functional. Shower door/design does not prevent water from escaping all over the bathroom - including the toilet seat.

Most receptionists, especially the englishman with all the tourist information, are professionals and genuinly like their jobs - also the bartenders.

Pricing however is high. Iceland is a very expensive place to visit, no doubt about it.

My partner and I stayed at the lovely Grand Hotel for one week between Christmas and New Year 2011. We had a brilliant stay at the hotel, it was spotlessy clean, lovely ambience, and the staff were helpful and friendly. One English gent working behind reception at the hotal made our stay even better with his informative overview of things to do in the City and his general helpfulness and approach to customer service (we didnt catch his name unfortunately). The food was absolutely fabtastic, the restaurant serves beautiful food to an exceptionally high standard. It is a little pricey but you pay for what you get to be fair. Our room was very comfy and tidy and modern. The wet room shower and bath were also a real treat to come back to after a long day trekking in the cold. My only dissappointment was the fact that the spa part of the hotel was closed during our stay. It was a shame that this wasn;t open as we would have spent much more time in the hotel had it been. For this reason, my rating is 4 instead of 5 stars!

My wife and I pre-booked the Grand's Hogmanay Dinner in the Brasserie, which came with pre-dinner fizz cocktails, 3 course dinner and a view of the fireworks and dancing till 2am.

Having eaten in the Brasserie only 2 nights earlier, we were full of optimism for the evening, however the advance billing certainly didn't live up to the actual exprience. We were amongst the last guests to sit down, and after 15 mnutes, a waiter turned up to ask for our wine order. As we didn't even have a menu, he brought one. I was surprised to find that we were not offered the same wine list as two nights earlier, and the selection available was much more expensive that before. We eventually chose a modest red at ISK11,900 (about £80) and waited for its arrival, and waited, and waited. After half an hour, I reordered and finally was able to start the celebration. The waiter had obviously not used a corkscrew before, and I eventually had to show him how. Basil Fawlty - whare are you when you're needed?

It was a full hour before anyone in the restaurant was served the first course, by which time I was onto the second basket of bread. No-one seemed to be taking charge of service, and some tables got, some didn't. All in all a shambles. The food however was tasty.

Another long wait for the main, and it finally arrived...turkey!

Again service was all over the place- some tables being served, some not, half tables being served followed by waits of 5 minutes for other companions to get theirs. By this time, I was getting quite fed up, but what the heck. I was there to enjoy myself.

At this point in the evening, guests were invited to take a 2 hour break to go on a city tour of the firework and bonfire displays,(which was fun) returning at 10.30 for pudding and coffee.

Another wait of 45 minutes ensued, with waiters not really knowing what to do. Eventually, I helped myself to a pot of coffee and made a bit of a fuss over the delays. This resulted in the nice pudding arriving sooner (for us) than for many.

After seeing in the New Year and watching the fireworks for a bit, we returned expectantly for dancing, however at 12.30am, the dance floor had not yet been cleared to enable dancing to begin and it looked as if it wouldn't start until 12.50am at the earliest. At this point, I gave up, and we walked back to our own hotel, five minutes away.

Take my adivice if you want - avoid this next year. It was overpriced, over hyped and and not an experience I want to have again. If I want to see Basil and Manuel in operation next year, I'll get out the DVD's instead of visiting the Grand.

We sat from 6pm until 7pm until the first course

We stayed in the Grand Hotel for 3 nights to celebrate the new year.
The accommodation itself was fine - bright room with huge windows overlooking the City (providing great views of the new year fireworks!) with a modern spacious bathroom (although no "goodies" provided - nor robes, robe hooks or loo brush)
Breakfast was buffet styel - but certainly not lavish (the most rubbery scrambled egg I've ever eaten!) and we had to fight for a table for 6 each day of our stay.
Our "package" included a 3 course dinner on the 30th - but despite having booked a table for 9pm, when we arrived at the restaurant we were told that not only had the booking not been received by the restaurant but that they couldn't serve us as they had run out of food! Although we were then offered the Bar menu, we chose to eat elsewhere not least as we had overheard others complaining about the food, which was also apparently served cold!
The arrangements for the New Year Gala Dinner seemed equally chaotic, both in our pre-arrival booking and at the time of our arrival when we were handed 3 envelopes containing a total of 7 tickets (which included names other than our own) on 2 separate tables. It took 3 attempts to clarify with the staff that we had been given the correct tickets (plus presumably one other person's) and that they were all on one table (as no one person seemed to have access to the variety of computer programmes required)
Dinner itself was served in a very haphazard manner, with plates being served on a random basis, which caused considerable delay. Each of my vegetarian courses arrived after everyone else on the table had finished eating!
It was also disapponting to find the "champagne" served was very sweet sparkling wine!
Otherwise the evening was great - the ballroom was beautifully presented and the evening included access to the roof terace to see the new year in and to witness the fantastic fireworks
So whilst we had a great weekend, we would hesitate to recommend this hotel to others