My wife and I stayed here for 3 nights in mid-October. We were greeted by a nice gentleman, who it turns out owns the hotel with his mother, who also own the beautiful farm behind the hotel and have a scenic private walking trail that leads all the way to the Gullfoss waterfall. The two of them alternated running the front desk and were very nice. The gentleman spoke excellent English, and the mother's English was much much better than our Icelandic. ( 'thank you' and 'good day' were about the extent of our native language)

For the first two days we were actually the ONLY people there. We had requested a room in the back (side opposite of the parking lot) because the view was much nicer and you don't have the noise concern with cars coming and going and parking just outside your window) but our trip was loosely oriented upon seeing the Northern Lights, so, the innkeeper agreed to ready another room on the parking lot side to give us the best opportunity to see them since it faced the proper way. And since we were the only ones there the noise was a non-issue anyway. He gave us the room at the end of the hotel where we'd have the best view, room 116. There are only 16 rooms total here, so by Icelandic standards, this place is a metropolis.

Rooms 115 and 116 are the rooms at the ends which are closest to the hot tub area. You just leave your room, open the door leading out and you are there. There are 2 hot tubs but unfortunately both were broke. The innkeeper was working on one of them, but was not able to get one working. It was in the low 30F's so it was probably a good thing because we would have certainly felt compelled to get in, and at some point of the process froze our tookies off. But it would have been nice to pass the time looking up for the Northern Lights. (We did see them one night, but there were lots of cloud cover so it wasn't exactly what we were hoping for....)

They have a restaurant with a very limited menu, perhaps 5 entrees total. It just worked out to where we didn't eat there, other than breakfast, which was included in the room price. Our 3 nights were $25,000 ISK total, which was a special for the off season. Breakfast was served in the restaurant, which had a nice view. It wasn't much, cereal, coffee, bread for toast, cheese, packaged ham slices, salami and juice. Enough to keep you from leaving hungry, but not overly exciting for the tastebuds. (Some of) Us Americans are so spoiled, I agree. Pancakes or waffles would have been nice. One evening we ventured out and had dinner at Cafe' Kleutter in Reybolt, which is about 20 minutes away. Now that was very good.

As mentioned over and over, this is the only place to stay near Gullfoss, so if you want to see it before the crowds or be able to bide your time to enjoy the best weather when visiting, you can't beat this place. It's just a few minutes right up the road, or you can take your time and walk, I'd guess it's about 2 or perhaps 3km. Another problem we encounted while trying to photograph is the mist (which is ALOT) gets blown wickedly all around, and if it's not cooperating it will make taking a decent picture difficult, so staying at Gullfoss give you lots of opportunities to return and make that memorable photo. Geysir (actually it is just a steaming hot pool now, it's Strokkur that's the attraction which is just a few yards away) is not far either, perhaps 15 minutes by car. Having these two amazing natural feats in such close proximity was wonderful.

The rooms themselves are clean, of decent size and just ok. Not posh, but beyond functional. The beds were two twin beds pushed together, which were both adequate and interesting. Brought back some really old memories. The shower was small, but once you realized that you are TWO sliding doors, it made entering and exiting all the better. The hot water here did not have any of that sulphur smell that we encountered in the other places that we stayed at during this trip.

Overall, we enjoyed our stay and would recommend to friends that they stay here as well.