DRIVING AROUND ICELAND
HIRE A CAR
Hire a car and try and do as many sites yourself. I think tours are great for the ones who aren’t as confident driving on the road, if you go in winter or if you don’t have that many days there. There are amazing tour companies out there that will most likely have the sites that you want to visit anyway! We chose to do everything ourselves as we didn’t want to spend the whole time in Reykavik. We actually only ended up staying on one night in town! The other 4 nights we stayed in these cute little cabins away from any other main towns
Once you’ve decided how many days you want the car for, I suggest you book the car as soon as you can. So many people love to drive around Iceland so you don’t want to wait til you get there to hire a car. Especially if you’re planning a trip in every other season other than WINTER. Matt and I went at the end of winter and early spring and all the roads were open. I didn’t see too many cars on the road all the time, but when we did get to the restaurants and some sites, the parking lot was chockablock.
ACCOMODATION
- ideally didn’t want to stay in Reykjavik the whole time
- stay in a cabin for at least 2 nights
- close to a few sites (don’t want to waste a WHOLE DAY to see 1 thing – unless it was REALLY worth it of course!)
- be in a secluded area and not too close to a main town
- this would be a bonus if you’re chasing Aurora Borealis ( The Northern Lights)
We found a few accommodations that we really loved and was within our budget. We ended up going with finding 2 cabins from air BNB and our hotel from www.hotelscombined.com. We were really happy with our cabins (I’ll do a separate post later) as both of them were very secluded and at night, we weren’t near any light pollution so chances of seeing The Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) was high… and guess what!!? we did see them on our second night! It was beautiful! That’s the beauty of staying away from Reykjavik.
We only stayed in Reykjavik for one night. We wanted to check out the town or walk around it for a day and we also wanted to go to the Blue Lagoon the night before we left. It was just more out of convenience to stay in Reykavik the last night.
PLANNING
Our trip was planned out pretty much a week before we were to leave (or even just a few nights before we left). We had an idea of where we wanted to go and see. Remember all the research we did before we booked accommodation? Yeah that kinda went out the door, but I guess we knew we had a few MUST DO’s that we HAD to do before we left Iceland.
OUR ITINERARY
- weather
- location of our accommodation
- northern lights
- ‘MUST DO’ list
DAY 1
DAY 2
Skogafoss Waterfall
Seljalandsfoss waterfall
Reykjadalur hot springs
DAY 3
Black Sand Beach- Vik
Geysir (GOLDEN CIRCLE)
checked into our cute little Airbnb- Cabin in BLASKOGABYGGO
Faxi Waterfall (GOLDEN CIRCLE)
DAY 4
Jökulsárlón glacial lagoon
Diamond Beach
sólheimajökull glacier
DAY 5
Kerid Volcano
DAY 6
Checked out of our hotel room
Had lunch at Icelandic Fish & Chips
Walked around town
We knew we couldn’t see EVERYTHING we really wanted to see. But we chose the itinerary that suit us the most. Iceland is definitely a GORGEOUS place that offers you insane landscapes and showcases the BEAUTY of nature all in one PLACE! Matt and I chose to take our time a little bit longer to enjoy it so if you do have a list and only feel like this is going to be your first and last time seeing Iceland, then you can definitely squeeze a LOT more on your itinerary. If you want me to put a post on the IDEAL itinerary based on where we stayed to MAXIMISE your time there, let me know! It would be a bit different to the way our trip ended up like x
