This year, Iceland once again topped the list of travelers’ destinations to visit so I thought I would share my tips and experiences for anyone looking to visit, especially in the Winter. I shared my itinerary here but wanted to go more in depth. Iceland is a really magical place, with all of the waterfalls, open roads, and constantly changing landscapes. It was my most favorite place until I went to South Africa, so now it my second favorite place in the world.
Most people stay in Reykjavik or only make it as far as the glacier lagoon, but if you’re going to go to Iceland, you should really explore it thoroughly. In the winter, if there is snow, many of the roads get blocked and since there is only one road you can travel in the winter, there are no other ways to go. I was fortunate to drive around the entire country (ring road) without running into any problems with the weather.
I went to Iceland in early March and the year after I went, Iceland had a record blizzard the same dates. I would recommend going to Iceland probably in September so its not as crowded as peak summer time, but is still green. When I went, it was icy, which is also a gorgeous time to go. I think going to Iceland twice—once when its snow covered, once when its green—is ideal. If you go during prime winter (December), there isn’t much daylight. March had equal numbers of night and day, but the sun seemed to come up pretty late and go down pretty late. It’s not as cold as you might think (or how I look in my photos from all the layers). The gulf stream actually keeps it from feeling too cold and the air feels more of a refreshing cool rather than a wet or windy cold. Also, the heat everywhere in Iceland feels really good! You don’t feel congested or suffocated by it. So here is some information on my experience in Iceland, where I went, how I got there and how it felt.
REYKJAVIK
Most flights from the United States seem to arrive in Iceland around 6:30 in the morning, which is an ungodly hour to be dumped in Iceland in the Winter. It was sleeting when we arrived, but that was the only bad weather we encountered during the 10 days we were in Iceland. We had to walk across the parking lot to get our rental car. I definitely recommend making sure you have snow tires in the Winter and getting sand and ash coverage because the roads have a lot of volcanic rock which kicks up and hits your windshield quite often. But besides that, driving in Iceland isn’t that difficult and is way better than having to join a tour group.
If you do have time to kill before checking in somewhere, most people like to head to the blue lagoon or Viking World which is near the airport , but we stayed at an Airbnb and the owner was nice enough to let us check in as soon as we arrived so we were able to take a nap for a few hours. When we woke up, we decided to explore the sites in Reykjavik. One of the most well-known sites is the church called Hallgrimskirkja which took 41 years to build. It is one of the tallest structures in the entire country and has gorgeous views of the city.
One of the most popular places to eat in Reykjavik is a hot dog stand called Baejarins Beztu Pylsur. It’s constantly on lists of the best foods to try in the world and is probably the best hot dog I ever had. It’s made with lamb and you pile on onion straws and a delicious sauce. We had that for lunch and walked around the city. The hot dog place is close to the Settlement Exhibition museum, but it was closed when we were there. The city isn’t really that big but has a really relaxed vibe and lots of random shops. A lot of people walk by the water and take pictures by a sculpture called the Sun Voyager but I missed that. People also like to go into the penis museum, which has real penises of different animals and people, too, I think but I decided to pass on that. Iceland also has the most amazing coffee drinks so we ducked into a coffee shop for a little while.
I wanted to try all the Iceland foods so we went to Tapas Barinn, which has dinner options that include a bunch of Icelandic dishes to try. My dishes were puffin, whale, Brennivín, lamb, lobster, skyr and Iceland fish. Brennivin is a liquor that’s called black death in Iceland. It’s really strong and pretty potent. Puffin is a colorful bird in Iceland, but it came in little dark chunks that had a gas grill flavor. The whale tasted like steak, but was pretty tough. And skyr ice cream was the dessert. Skyr is normally served for breakfast as a yogurt made from goats milk, with a thicker consistency and not so much sugar. I had skyr for breakfast every day.
The Blue Lagoon is near Reykjavik but I went there at the end of the trip. I don’t think you need to spend more than a day or two in Reykjavik since I feel like Iceland is more about the landscapes than the city.
THE GOLDEN CIRCLE
When people go to Iceland for more than a quick layover, the blue lagoon and the golden circle are the excursions they end up visiting the most. There are so many tour companies that do the golden circle, but its way better and easy to do on your own. At a basic level, the golden circle is simply Thingvellir National Park (Þingvellir), the waterfall, Gullfoss, and the Geysir. You also see so many Icelandic horses (NOT ponies) along the route.
If you are driving yourself and using an actual GPS, not your phone, keep in mind the letters in Iceland are not the same as English so you’ll have to make sure when you write them down, you write them in the correct way, with dots above I’s and such, otherwise your GPS won’t know where you want to go.
So the golden circle is an all day excursion and starts about an hour from Reykjavik. The first stop is normally Thingvellir National Park, which is known for being the site of parliament from the 10th to 18th centuries. This place is also known for filming locations for Game of Thrones, buuuut this place is a pretty big deal because Iceland is divided by the Mid-Atlantic Rift here. You can see both the North America and Europe tectonic plates and Iceland is the only place in the world where this rift is above sea-level, and nowhere can you see the edges of both plates as clearly as in Thingvellir. People can also scuba dive between the two, but the water is really cold as you can imagine. Thingvellir is supposed to be one of the greenest places in the summer, but obviously that isn’t the case in the winter, so it was pretty cool to visit but not super amazing since it was snow covered.
Our next stop on the golden circle isn’t typical for most golden circle tours. It’s a greenhouse called Friðheimar Farmhouse that grows its own cucumbers and tomatoes and imports its own bees. Shortly after we went there, the Kardashians went there on their show, so it might be more popular now, but when I went, it was really laid back. They serve homemade bread, soup and pasta and have a farm with Icelandic horses.
The Strokkur geyser was up next on our route. This geyser erupts about every 5-10 minutes and shoots between 60-200 feet high. I’ve never been to Yellowstone but as I understand it, that one only erupts once or twice an hour. It was great being able to just stand there and watch it erupt every few minutes. The geysir is surrounded by a really cool area called Haukadalur Valley which is an impressive site. Its surrounding by little mud-pits and mini geysers and the ground has various colors. The geyser was my favorite part of the three main attractions on the Golden Circle.
The last major stop on the Golden Circle is a waterfall called Gullfoss. This is usually the only waterfall most tourists see if they venture outside of Reykjavik, so I think that may be why it’s so well known. While I will say it is a very powerful waterfall, it was probably my least favorite in Iceland. Iceland in general has the most amazing waterfalls I’ve ever seen so comparative to the rest of the waterfalls in the world, Gullfoss is quite the sight. People often get lucky and see rainbows around the waterfall, but we didn’t see that. Also, I would highly recommend buying crampons to slide over your boots around any of the waterfalls in Iceland. The ground close to the waterfalls is always really slick and slippery.
Gullfoss is about a half hour from one of Iceland’s lesser known hot springs called the Secret Lagoon. Unlike the Blue Lagoon, this one is not crowded at all and not very expensive. This was my first lagoon experience in Iceland so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The water levels and temperatures vary depending on where you are walking around in a lagoon. The water can feel really cold in certain spots and boiling in others.
Finally, we headed to our place for the night, Farmhouse Efsidalur. This place definitely screams Iceland. It’s family owned, they have horses running around and they have their own creamery supplied by the cows on the farm. You can stare at the cows while eating your ice cream. They also have an amazing restaurant using many ingredients from their farm and you get your own little mini cabin.
SOUTH COAST
The South Coast has started to see more tourists, but normally, most people will do Reykjavik, the Blue Lagoon, maybe the Golden Circle on a tour and then head home. The South Coast has really cool waterfalls, a crashed plane, tuft houses and a black sand beach. We didn’t get to see the crashed plane (you have to hike to get to it) but were able to do everything else!
Selijalandsfoss is the waterfall in Iceland that you can walk behind. You definitely need crampons for this! You have to go up some steps and they are covered with ice. Everyone kept falling and sliding back, knocking people over all over the place. Luckily I was able to avoid them but, yeah, definitely wear some crampons to go behind the waterfall. This waterfall feels so powerful, though, especially since you can get right up on it. The waterfall has its origins underneath a glacier and has a 200-foot drop.
Down the street from the waterfall is the Skogar folk museum. It was closed when we went, but this is one of the best places to see turf houses, which are right in front of the parking lot.
Skogafoss is another gorgeous waterfall you pass by on this route. This is another one that constantly has rainbows. Luckily, I saw the rainbows at this one. I think this is probably the prettiest waterfall of them all. Here, you can walk up steps to go to the top of the waterfall. There are about 500 steps which are pretty steep but its worth the view.
Finally, the other “must see” on the coast is the black sand beach in Vik. The beach is literally made of lava and looks so pretty with the contrast of the white waves. The most famous thing here, though, is the enormous basalt stacks. But I couldn’t find them? Not sure why. I’m not sure what happened there. But this is also a good spot to stop for lunch.
SOUTH ICELAND
So if it is winter, it’s probably going to be more difficult to drive further around Iceland due to constant snow and blocked roads. Luckily (again, we got so lucky on this trip), we had good weather and were able to continue! A great thing about going to Iceland in the winter is that you can explore ice caves. Also, there is reindeer! They tend to stay on top of mountains in the Summer but you can find them all over the place starting in southern Iceland in the winter. One thing about Iceland that’s amazing is that the landscape around you is constantly changing. As you drive further South, you see things like lava covered with moss surrounding the glaciers.
Vatnajökull glacier is the largest glacier in Europe, covering 8% of Iceland’s landmass. It’s way too dangerous to explore on your own so there are some tour groups to take you on the glacier. I went with Extreme Iceland Glacier Adventure so take us off-roading onto the glacier and through the ice cave. There wasn’t a lot of other people with us, so that’s nice not having so many people in a tour group. We were off-roading for about half an hour to get to the ice cave and that was just fun in itself. But the ice cave was sooo surreal. You climb down into this little tiny opening and it’s just this huge cave underneath, with bright blue ice and different sections of the cave. This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The ice cave locations change every year though because obviously they melt. They also have to control the amount of people that go into them since if too many people are breathing down there at once combined with the body heat, the ice cave can start to melt. So once temperatures go up around April, they stop doing ice cave tours due to safety concerns.
The most well-known thing to do in South Iceland is visit Jokulsarlon Glacier lagoon! The lagoon first started forming in 1934, when Breiðamerkurjökull glacier started retreating, leaving the lagoon in its path. This is where they have icebergs floating around the water. The icebergs are actually more than 1000 years old. In the summer, you can take a boat ride around the glacier. But in the winter, you can see seals everywhere.
On the other side, there is a small black sand beach with ice that looks like diamonds so it’s called Diamond Beach. We didn’t go over there but it looks really amazing from what I see in photos.
EAST ICELAND
So I didn’t do very much in east Iceland. The biggest city that way is Hofn, but we didn’t stop there. We ended up staying at a random hotel before there since our guesthouse reservations fell through. South and East Iceland are sooo dark, though, they have such vivid stars. But East Iceland has the most amazing landscapes. You have to drive following the arms of the fjords and that sunset was one of the prettiest.
We ended up stopping at the Icelandair Hotel Herad for dinner and sleep. I ate a reindeer burger at the hotel restaurant and it was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had.
NORTH ICELAND
So there are a lot of things to do in North Iceland (you can check my itinerary for a list). But since it was winter, most of the things we wanted to do were actually frozen. Again, the fact that we could even drive on the North part of the country in Winter was very rare. During Winter, only one road is open around the country (Ring Road). The entire interior of Iceland has all of the roads closed off. Normally it will snow and the winds are so strong up North that the snow just covers your car so you can’t really drive there. This is also where a lot of volcanic ash picks up with the wind and can really damage your windshield. But our SUV had chains on the tires and we made for sand and ash insurance. While driving in this area, we drove by one car that had flipped due to taking a turn fast and being pushed over by the wind. Iceland is a place where you really need to pick a substantial vehicle and not just try to pick something small to save money.
Anyway, I really wanted to see the Krafla volcano crater because pictures I have seen of it are so beautiful and bright blue. So we parked by the geothermal power plant and started our trek up in the snow. A couple passed by and we asked if the hike up in the snow was worth it and they said that it was. So we walked the hour up it… and it was just a big white hole! Definitely not worth it in the winter.
Across the way was a place called Namafjall. It has boiling mud pots and sulfur hot springs. People bake bread in the steam and you can hike around the area. You can’t dip into those hot springs, but there is a pool fed by the geothermal heat not too far from there called Myvatn Nature Baths. Depending on when you visit Northern Iceland, the sulfur smell can get really intense. We didn’t really want to stay outside very long around Lake Myvatn because of the intense smell. The area around there was a lot of volcanoes and hikes that are popular in the Summer.
We found a really great stop for lunch called Vogafjos Cowshed Café that makes its own ice cream and has local homemade food. The place has been owned by the same family generation for 120 years. They have a little farm and you can also watch the cows being milked from the windows in the restaurant.
This region has a lot of really amazing waterfalls. Unfortunately because of the snow, waterfalls like Dettifoss and Sellfoss were a little too hard to get to, but we were able to visit “the god of waterfalls,” Godafoss. This waterfall was just so impressive with its size and beauty. This one and Skogafoss were my favorite waterfalls of all the ones I saw in Iceland.
We didn’t have a place booked for the night, but I went to farmholidays.is and found a couple of cabins that were by a lake. I called the number and it was actually a homeowner. He said he would have the cabins ready in an hour. When we pulled up, the couple showed us their two cute cabins that were completely ready for us and even heated up the hot tub for us to enjoy. In the morning, our car was making a weird noise and it was a Sunday so all of the automative places were closed. Our hosts called a friend who worked for a dealership and they were going to open for us. But our host played around with our car before we headed to the dealership and it turned out a big piece of lava was stuck in our car. So great they were there to help us.
Akureyri is the biggest city in North Iceland and is the second largest city in Iceland. It’s kind of like a smaller version of Reykjavik. Akureyri has a major airport so it’s a good place to fly in to explore the North or West part of Iceland. We didn’t really have time to explore but drove through and it looked like a cute place.
EAST ICELAND
One of the popular places to check out in Iceland is the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. It’s supposed to be really pretty and scenic. Next time I visit Iceland I would like to go there for a few days. But we traveled down to Borgarnes for the night. I’m not really a big fan of museums, but Borgarnes has a really fun interactive museum on the history of Iceland called the Settlement Museum. They also have a really nice restaurant at the museum where I had the best lamb stew. We stayed in the Icelandair Hotel Hamar that had really great views and an awesome hot tub. There’s a lot more to do in East Iceland which I’ve touched on in my itinerary but we had to be on our way for the Blue Lagoon.
THE BLUE LAGOON
The winds are some of the strongest in Iceland driving from Borgarnes back to where we started our trip so you have to be cautious in that area and again, an SUV is recommended. Since we were celebrating my birthday while at the Blue Lagoon, we stopped at a mall outside of Reykjavik because they had a Dunkin Donuts and I wanted to put together a donut tower for my birthday! Apparently, Dunkin Donuts doesn’t open until noon (weird right??) and we got there around 11:20AM. The employee was setting up for the day so we had to hang out at the mall and watch him prepare until they opened at noon to get my donuts.
Okay so here we go to The Blue Lagoon, one of the most well-known and mixed reviewed places in Iceland. So I would highly recommend splurging (and it is a splurge) to stay at the hotel next to the Blue Lagoon called The Silica Hotel. There is also another hotel that recently opened I think so not too sure about what you get in that one, but at the Silica Hotel, you get your own private lagoon that you only share with the hotel guests. And there are only something like 20 rooms so you aren’t really sharing with a lot of people. You also get free admission to the main Blue Lagoon. I really loved staying there. The employees are really accommodating as well. I booked a Northern Lights tour and they were really helpful when I ran into an issue. Okay so first let’s talk about the northern lights generally. Generally, what you see in photos, that bright green lighting up the whole sky, is a trick of a camera. While you mayyyyyy be able to see that with your naked eye, it’s more likely you will see a small greenish tinted cloud. That’s more likely of “northern lights,” especially in Iceland. And then with your camera you pick up that crazy green color. The Northern Lights guide in Iceland actually said he thinks the best place in the world to see Northern Lights would be Alaska or Canada. So let’s talk about my experience. So the guide actually forgot about picking me up. The front desk of my hotel eventually tracked him down and it turned out he had stopped with the rest of the tour to look at some northern lights before picking me up. And then by the time he picked me up, they were gone. That’s another thing about northern lights—they come and go quickly. It isn’t this thing where every night, the sky stays a bright green. The sky has to be completely dark and completely free of clouds and then sometimes they will appear every now and then and then disappear. So yeah, they were gone by the time he picked me up. At one point he pointed to a light green smudge of a cloud and said that was some. So yeah, as far as northern lights go, I would suggest going to Alaska or Canada and getting one of those hotels with a glass window on the roof instead of going to Iceland for that.
So now back to the actual main Blue Lagoon. I really enjoyed it! It was crowded, but not entirely so. They have a bar where you can order drinks but they cut you off at two drinks I think. You can also do a floating massage in a different area of the lagoon, which was really fun, except they dunk you periodically to keep you warm and that kept getting water in my ear. I’d still do it again though! They also have silica mud you can put on your face while you’re swimming around. They also have a sauna right there as well. I think the reason people don’t like the Blue Lagoon is that they are picturing something serene and private. You definitely get that if you stay at the hotel by the Blue Lagoon. The restaurant is really nice too, but pricey. Such a fun experience thought and a great ending to my trip! It was a lot of fun celebrating my birthday floating around our private lagoon at the hotel.
So Iceland remains one of my favorite places I’ve ever been. I would recommend going during shoulder season and renting an SUV and navigating Iceland without a tour group. The landscapes are just unreal there. I’m sure its going to get more and more crowded so that might unfortunately interrupt the magic of being there. I’m trying to go to the Faroe Islands soon, though, which are supposed to be a less crowded version of Iceland.
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