As our trip to Iceland draws closer, I decided to rent a car. The airport is about an hour away from the capital city where we’ve booked a hotel and there’s a lot we’d like to see on our own. I upgraded the little four-door hatchback to include GPS. It seemed like a wise investment.
The airport site links to all of the usual car-rental companies like, Hertz, Budget, Avis etc. I visited one and used the English translation feature embedded in the page. Just for comparison’s sake, I went to another company and they didn’t offer the translation option. I tried to fill out my preferences in Icelandic, but wasn’t sure if I was asking for a tractor-trailer or a scooter, so I used Google translate to make things clearer. When I got to the personal info area, this is what showed up. Notice the third province down:
Does territory translate to worst country in Icelandic? It would seem so! I even translated it again, just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things.
That was amusing enough but here’s the real kicker. The page I translated with an option showed the rental at about $370. The page I translated using Google showed virtually the same car and options for more than $100 less. I would think the companies would have competitive rates, or maybe I happened to check the most expensive one first, and was wise to shop around. But it felt like an in-house translation meant a higher price.
Regardless, we now have wheels for our trip. And we know what Iceland thinks of our NWT. Maybe they’re just getting us back for thinking that Iceland is a frigid wasteland. That’s Greenland. Iceland never gets very cold or very hot. It’s about -4C or so there right now and long-range estimate puts the temp above zero for our trip.
By the way, I was about to book an extra night for our trip so we could get a nap after landing at what will be midnight hour in our minds, but just before I clicked “purchase” I realized that by the time we get our bags and travel to Reykjavik, it will be nearly time to check out! So we will just have to snooze in the car, beg the hotel to let us check in early, or enjoy several strong coffees. Probably all three!