Hótel Karólína

The location is central and beautiful, with comfortable and cozy rooms. The staff is friendly and attentive. The breakfast is varied and of high quality. The accommodation is consistently clean and modern.

My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed our two night stay at Hotel Karolina. The staff were very helpful and very friendly, including the staff at Hotel Egilsen where you had to check in (it is just across the street). Breakfast was excellent and among the best on our 17 day trip. The room was a bit small but very comfortable and there is a large and well appointed common area which we enjoyed using. Guests also have access to the kitchen which was very nice to have.

We selected this accommodation based on positive reviews. The location is perfect, very central. The shared areas are beautifully decorated and very clean. It is a lovely house - the key word being “house”. Unlike other guesthouses we’ve stayed at in Iceland (which are more akin to hotels/motels), this is essentially shared accommodation with individual bedrooms. This may work well if you are a large group renting the entire space. However, as a couple, we had a terrible experience because of the group renting the downstairs rooms. They were incredibly loud at all hours of the day, and until about midnight. They monopolized the downstairs space and so we were unable to comfortably use it at or around mealtimes or at any point in the evenings. And after they’d left in the mornings, the shared space was a disaster - their stuff scattered from one end to the other, children’s cereal all over the floor, etc. And they helped themselves to the food we had put in the shared fridge. While some might say that the hosts can’t be expected to control the behaviour of inconsiderate guests, this would not have been as much of a problem if it had been clear from the outset that this was a space where you’d have roommates. If we’d known this, we would have chosen elsewhere. And some less significant points - we paid for a room with a private bathroom. We had taken this to mean that we would have a bathroom that no one else would have access to, which was not exactly the case. Our room was on the second floor and we had to go out in the hallway to access the bathroom. We weren’t sure at first if it was for use only by us. There are other rooms on that floor that theoretically could use it if they wanted. A small sign saying “private” or “for use by guests in room 8 only” might have helped with this. Also, while the bathroom is huge, the shower stall is tiny and badly in need of some maintenance (sliding doors were falling off). And although there were wall mounted containers for shampoo and body wash, these were empty. I would not stay here again, especially for the price.