It’s taken me a long time to get to this post, partially because it is going to be my longest blog entry to date, and also because I wanted to finish out most of my other 2024 trips so that when I post this one it sits on top of the blog for awhile instead of being relegated to the archives in a matter of months. Today it’s time to write it all down before some of the minor details start to escape my memory.
Iceland has been sitting in the #1 spot of my bucket list for YEARS. I’ll admit, it started because of the Blue Lagoon. A couple that I used to work with went to the Blue Lagoon and posted incredible photos, and I thought, “I have got to go there.” Prior to those photos, the country had never even entered my radar. When I found out that I was going to have the opportunity to go, along with my sister, I immediately started researching obsessively. I joined many Facebook travel groups and learned everything there was to know about the country in a matter of months—which cars to rent, which towns to visit, how to drive safely, whether or not to tip, what equipment to bring—you name it, I knew about it. There was nothing that came as a shock to me once I was actually in the country, because unlike most of my other trips that involve a lot more spontaneity, I was going to be damn sure that I didn’t miss a thing that I wanted to do.
Through those Facebook groups I learned that the Blue Lagoon is not what makes Iceland incredible. Iceland has so much to offer, and I’m so glad that I was led to see all of the most amazing things, and honestly if I had never even made it to the Lagoon it still would have been the trip of a lifetime. By the time my sister and I were set to travel, I had over 300 things dotted on my Google map and we hit as many of them as we could. So without further ado, here is my 10 day Iceland itinerary. I can’t promise I’ll be able to tone down the number of pictures I post, since I probably took at least a thousand!
March 1: We drove to Chicago O’Hare and flew via Icelandair at 6 pm.
March 2: We landed in Keflavik at 6 am. We gathered our luggage, shopped for duty free alcohol (I learned that there are very few places to buy alcohol in Iceland and grocery stores only sell NA beers, so we had to get it now or never), and then found our rental car. From the airport, we made our way straight to the Blue Lagoon as we planned on driving around the Ring Road in a counter-clockwise fashion. It also made the most sense to do this first for a number of reasons. First, I figured soaking in the warm water and having a drink or two was a great way to relax a bit and clear out some of the jet lag before actually driving any long distances. We wanted to ease in and get a good sleep before doing anything too strenuous. Second, there was an active volcano in the area which at the time was erupting about once a month, and it was due any day to erupt for the third or fourth time. This was causing the Blue Lagoon to shut down for a week or two around eruption times. Since I wanted to go so badly, I figured that booking it on day 1 would either get it out of the way before it shut down, or it gave us a chance to try again at the end of the trip if it was already closed by the time we got there. It was like having 2 chances to get there instead of one. I would have just hated to have missed it because I saved it for the end and then they closed down!
Fortunately, luck was on our side on this day. Not only did we get to go to the Blue Lagoon, but we got to drive through the site of the last eruption, where the lava was still cooling and steaming all around us. It was unbelievably surreal. Somehow they had managed to make a new road through the lava, and we were able to see where the lava destroyed the old road. And we just drove through it like it was NO BIG DEAL, as it was literally still burning on all sides of our car. CRAZY!! I still can’t figure out how our tires didn’t melt as we drove through there! Luck was on our side again as a few hours after we left the lagoon it was evacuated for a suspected eruption that ended up not actually happening until about 2 weeks later. I can’t imagine how freaked out I would have been if I was in a lagoon, in my swimsuit, drinking alcohol in a freaking cold country, and I would have had to run to my car soaking wet to get out of the way of a volcano. Wow.
From the Blue Lagoon we drove to our first Airbnb in Selfoss, showered, took much needed naps, and then went to Ingólfsskáli Viking Restaurant for dinner. I chose this place because of the authentic Viking building and atmosphere, and because I just wanted to drink alcohol out of a Viking horn. My sister and I both had the lamb dinner, which was out of this world, and we both saved room for dessert. The only disappointment of this place was how now lively it was on a Saturday night. We had expected Viking shows on the stage and the axe throwing activities and everything promised on the website, but there wasn’t anything actually happening. That’s ok, the meal alone was worth it. After dinner, it was an early night to bed.
March 3: We started out by making oatmeal and coffee in our Airbnb. Research showed that food in Iceland is expensive (you can’t expect anything to grow on volcanic rock, so everything has to be imported) so we planned on having a few nice meals, but also to cook a few meals ourselves to cut back on costs. On this day we hit the infamous Golden Circle, where we stopped first at Kerid Crater, then Geysir. On our way to lunch we stopped and pet some beautiful Icelandic horses on the side of the road.
Lunch was at the infamous Fridheimar (my keyboard won’t let me write this one in Icelandic). This restaurant is inside of a greenhouse that grows tomatoes. The entire menu is made out of tomato—including the desserts and the drinks. We were admittedly a little (or maybe a lot actually) leery of this place. I mean, who loves tomatoes that much? It turned out to be an absolutely delightful meal. I believe my sister had some kind of ravioli, and I had the all you can eat tomato soup and bread. There was a basil plant sitting on our table, and I could pick fresh basil and drop it into my soup. The star of the show though was the bread. Oh my gosh that was the best bread I’ve ever eaten in my life. We were lucky enough to be placed right next to the bread table, so every time a new loaf came available, I was able to grab some steaming hot bread before anybody else. They gave us this cucumber salsa that seemed like a strange thing to put on top of bread, but it was so so so good.
Once we ate our fill of the entrees, we couldn’t leave without trying the strange sounding tomato cheesecake. It came in a cute little flower pot, and was very good. After our meal, I had a cup of coffee, and then we were able to stroll around the greenhouse admiring all of the plants, and seeing the bees they import into the greenhouse hard at work.
With our bellies full, we ventured out to see Gullfoss, and stumbled upon the much less touristy but equally amazing Faxafoss. Since we had come prepared with crampons, we were able to walk on the ice right down to the base of the waterfall and really feel all of its power. After the waterfalls, we went to the town of Hveragerdi to have dinner at The Greenhouse. It was very cute in terms of ambiance, but the food was just OK and the bar was closed.
This night we stayed in the Airbnb we were most looking forward to…the Aurora Igloo in Hella! I can’t speak highly enough about this place. It was so warm and cozy in that bed and while we weren’t blessed with any northern lights, we did see a great sunset, and woke up to the sounds of a rainstorm in the middle of the night. We both wished we had time to spend 2 nights there instead of 1.
March 4: Before hitting the road we grabbed a couple of pastries at a bakery in town. Our morning was full of waterfalls, starting with Seljalandsfoss, Gljúfrabúi, a few smaller ones in between, and then Skógafoss. With all of these waterfalls, you have the opportunity to start at one and then continue hiking to multiple other waterfalls along the same pathway. To see the rest of the waterfalls near Skógafoss, we had to climb A LOT of stairs. I can’t remember how many exactly, but it was somewhere between 400 and 500 stairs. It was neat to see that huge waterfall from the top looking down, definitely worth the exertion to get there! Rutshellir Cave was another fun spot to explore.
From there we stopped at the edge of the Sólheimajökull glacier. There is a parking lot from which you can find a hiking path that takes you directly to the base of the glacier. This was my first time ever seeing a glacier, and I was not prepared for this kind of beauty. I have honestly never seen anything so spectacular in my entire life. The glaciers are a color of blue that I have never seen (the pictures don’t even capture it quite right), and it is just so immense it takes your breath away. I stood there just silent with my jaw dropped. I could not get enough of this sight. Even though I saw a lot of amazing things both before and after this, the glacier was my favorite thing of the entire trip, and I was completely enamored with all of the ones we saw during the rest of our time in Iceland.
Unfortunately, we had to get going because we had scheduled ourselves to see the Lava Show in the town of Vík. The lava show was interesting and informative, but my sister and I both agreed that we could have skipped it. It was one of those things that everybody on the internet said we HAD to see, but I would have rather just stayed and stared at that glacier.
After the show, we ate lunch at Black Crust Pizzeria. I heard it was good, and the whole black crust concept just seemed to scream “Iceland” to me since the entire country is black and barren. I had the Icelandic langoustine, truffle infused cream cheese, red onion, rucola, rosemary, fresh basil pizza. My sister had the ham, pineapple, bacon, cream cheese pizza. Both were amazing, and we got two meals out of them.
Next we ventured to the Black Sand Beach. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves on this one. This is the most dangerous beach in Iceland. Many people die here by getting caught up in the sneaker waves and being swept out to sea. If I couldn’t feel the sense of how powerful Iceland is by driving through hot lava, seeing geysers and powerful waterfalls, and experiencing a glacier, I definitely got the hint at this beach. We spotted a church up high on a hill that we thought was beautiful, and decided to drive up to see it. Turned out that this was a popular tourist attraction, because the church with the black sand beaches behind it makes for an incredible photo op. Glad we discovered it, because we almost missed out!
Finally, we drove to our hotel: Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon. We ate our leftover pizza and soaked in the hot tub for a few hours before bed. It was a very busy, but wonderful day.
March 5: The next day we woke up early because I wanted to get to Diamond Beach as the sun was rising. Diamond beach is an area of the black sand beach where large chunks of icebergs are known to wash up on shore. When the sun hits them just right they sparkle like diamonds. Unfortunately, the sun wasn’t out, and there wasn’t a lot of ice on the beach, but we made do with what we had, and it was still beautiful. Across the street from the beach is the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon—also an incredible spot to view a glacier. This place had seals resting on the ice, which was neat to see. It was also our meeting spot for our ice cave tour!
Our tour guide drove us up to the edge of the glacier in one of the most wild rides of my life. At one point he even had to stop and let air out of the truck tires in order for us to make it all the way in. Once we made it safely, we hiked as a group into the Crystal Blue Ice Cave. Seeing the inside of a glacier is another can’t miss experience. Our tour guide had us turn on our cell phone flashlights and hold them right up to the ice and move them around, and I was so awestruck by the many layers and bubbles inside of a glacier. It’s something that can’t even be described. I’ll once again let the photos speak for themselves here, although the photos don’t do it proper justice.
After our tour we needed to embrace our most harrowing day of driving. I was nervous to drive along the southeast coast of Iceland because the road is right along the edge of many steep cliffs, the east side of the island is home to many reindeer, and if we didn’t make good time we’d be driving in the dark. We made quick stops at a few more waterfalls to stretch our legs, grabbed lunch in Höfn at Kaffi Hornid (I had fish and chips, sister had a reindeer burger) and then continued on to our destination of Seydisfjördur.
We did not realize that to get to this town you had to descend down a mountain. It was snowing to the point where the roads weren’t really slippery, but we were still somehow in a complete whiteout situation. We could only see the road a few feet ahead of us, we had no idea how long our descent was, and no idea if the weather and the roads were about to get worse or not. It was with a huge sigh of relief that we finally made it. We booked this quaint little guesthouse called Vid Lonid, where we had splurged for a room with a balcony based off the suggestion of many Google reviews. We cooked a meal in the hotel room and stayed put for the evening. We were fortunate to have the entire house to ourselves somehow, which was good because we shared a lot of laughs that night.
March 6: We walked around the town and took pictures of the church (the main reason we had chosen to stay in this town) and then continued on to Studlagil Canyon. If you look up pictures of this canyon on Instagram, you’ll see why I wanted so badly to go there. It was not as breathtaking in real life, mainly because it was winter and not the best time to go. I was nervous again this day because cars were getting stuck in ditches all over the place trying to get to this canyon. Fortunately, our little rented RAV4 was up to the job. We made one more stop at the Hverir geothermal area and then completed our drive to Akureyri.
I’d have to say Akureyri was my favorite town of them all. It’s not as big as Reykjavik, it’s very walkable, and it’s just cute. The stop lights are even little hearts. The shops were fun to walk around in. There are many photo opportunities throughout the main road. After having a pasta dinner at Bautinn Akureyri, we checked into our Airbnb and prepared to go to the Forest Lagoon. Of the 3 lagoons we went to on this trip, Forest was my favorite one. It was a lot less crowded, they served better drinks, and there was just something about soaking in a lagoon in the dead of night while overlooking the lights from the entire city of Akureyri. The only thing that could have made it more perfect would have been the northern lights, but we were not meant to see them on this trip, sadly.
March 7: We had breakfast in Akureyri at the Blaa Kannan Cafe. It was so good that we actually went in again a couple of hours later to grab a second cup of coffee. We walked around the town and spent as much time as we could shopping and enjoying ourselves. Then we embarked on our longest driving day. We were heading to an Airbnb in Grundarfjördur. There’s not much to see on this part of the drive, and we made the mistake of listening to Google when it told us there was a faster route, so we ended up driving on dirt (mud!) roads for hours on end. I hated it, honestly, but I guess every day of a trip can’t be the best day ever. It was all worth it in the end when we got to our lodging which boasted a hot tub that looked directly out on Kirkjufell. We cooked a pasta dinner and then spent the evening in the tub.
March 8: We checked out of our Airbnb and went to go see Kirkjufellsfoss. This is another Instagram famous site of two waterfalls right next to each other with the mountain of Kirkjufell in the background behind them. It was only a couple of minutes from where we had stayed. On this day, the wind was blowing so hard that we struggled to get to the photo spot, and when we got there the wind was blowing the waterfalls up and backward! We only stayed for about 4 minutes, but we made some funny videos and enjoyed a lot of laughs.
From there we hit the road for the final time, making our way to Reykjavik. It was an easy drive. We stopped on the outskirts of the city at Skarfagardur Lighthouse, because we had heard that there were whales hanging out in this area the past few weeks and we had hoped to catch sight of one without paying for a whale watching tour. We didn’t. Oh well. We hit our first major snafu of the trip when we found out our Airbnb was canceled due to maintenance issues. The man who owns that Airbnb offered us another of his properties and we agreed to take it sight unseen. What else are you supposed to do when you’re in a foreign country and have zero time to try to find alternate accommodations on your own? It turned out to be a very disgusting place—so gross that we decided to share a bed because one of them was covered in hair and I refused to sleep in it. I also refused to shower without wrapping my feet up in plastic bags, because I wouldn’t let my bare feet touch the floor. Honestly though, if that’s the worst thing that happened to us in Iceland considering we could have been in a volcano, fallen off a cliff, been sucked out to sea, gotten into a horrible car accident, or been delayed on the Ring Road due to weather…I won’t complain too much! We planned to spend as little time in the place as possible.
Our first day in Reykjavik we ate lunch at the Posthus Food Hall (yum!), went shopping, tried the famous hot dogs (YUCK!!!), had drinks at the Magic Ice Bar, saw Hallgrimskirkja lit up at night, and watched the sunset from the Sky Lagoon.
The Sky Lagoon is also highly recommended. I could literally stay in a lagoon all day if given the chance. There’s just something about that cold air on your skin while the water keeps you warm. I love it! This lagoon is known for their 7 step ritual, which I’m pretty sure I have a picture of so I won’t go into detail. I was very proud of myself for mastering the cold plunge. It took me 3 or 4 tries, but I was finally able to stay in up to my neck in the cold water for a full 5 minutes!
March 9: For our last full day in Iceland we started at the Icelandic Phallological Museum, AKA the penis museum. We enjoyed our phallic shaped breakfast waffles, but the museum itself was pretty disturbing…not sure we’d go there again!
Next we went to the national park to snorkel the Silfra Fissure! The Silfra is where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates nearly meet, so it’s like touching two continents at one time. I must admit…this made me incredibly nervous. I’ve never been a good snorkeler, always going too deep and inhaling a lot of water. I always get those goggles that don’t fit quite right and my eyes fill up with water too. Additionally, this was ice cold glacier water, so we were packed in layers and our suits had to be tight, tight, TIGHT. I’m talking so tight that the tour guide even called one part of the suiting up process the choking station, and we were absolutely choked. It took a good half hour to finish suiting up, and by the time we were “ready” to go I couldn’t have felt less ready. I nearly backed out several times, and could feel my anxiety skyrocketing as I was choking in my dry suit. The only reason I didn’t back out is because I knew I would regret it for the rest of my life, so off we went.
Sure enough, I was the one in the back of the pack getting water in my mouth and in my goggles. At one point I tried to empty the water from my goggles, but then couldn’t get them back on due to the layers of gloves I had to try to work with. The tour guide was laughing at me as I splashed around like a drowning animal, and it just wasn’t all that enjoyable. The views, though, were spectacular, and I tried to embrace it all. Water in my mouth? Meh…it’s glacier water, just drink it. Fortunately it was a short little swim, and then you get awesome photos after you’re done, along with a nice cup of hot chocolate. I survived, which turned out to be pretty significant, because one other guy in our group nearly didn’t. His suit malfunctioned, he filled up with freezing cold water, and hypothermia set in quickly. Yeah, this is one of those things I’ll never do again, but hundreds of people do this every single day, and most people seem to love it, so I certainly won’t try to talk anyone out of it. Just be aware of the risks.
After returning to Reykjavik and warming up we went to dinner at Bastard Brewing (yay! A brewery!). We had the most amazing tacos we’ve ever eaten. My sister claims that she doesn’t even like tacos, but she ordered these, and hasn’t stopped talking about them since. The beer was also the best I had on the entire trip. Next, we went to Kokteilbarinn, because I really wanted to have drinks inside their adorable Champagne Train.
March 10: Our departure day. I was both ready and not ready to leave at this point. For one thing, it had gotten old packing up our suitcases and moving along every single day, but for another, there was still so much to see and experience. We started out with coffee and breakfast at Kaffibrennslan. They had a great little heated greenhouse we could sit in to people watch as we ate.
Following breakfast, we toured the inside of Hallgrimskirkja. If I can offer one solid piece of advice for this entire trip, it’s this: Get in line EARLY! The elevator to get to the top of the church only holds 6 people, and the line was very very long. If we hadn’t been some of the first in line, we’d have been waiting at least an hour for that elevator, and we probably would have had to miss out to get to the airport on time.
We ended up having plenty of time, finished touring the church, stopped in a few more shops for souvenirs (Icelandic chocolate is phenomenal!) and had time to spare. Not wanting to go to the airport until we absolutely had to admit to ourselves that our trip was over, I suggested checking out FlyOver Iceland. This was another thing that everyone in the online forums said you MUST do when in Iceland. A simulated ride that shows you the sites of Iceland? Lame! Go see them in person! I am happy to say that my way of thinking was very wrong. This was one of my favorite experiences, so much so that I actually was crying at how beautiful it was. It was truly a great way to wrap up the trip and to say goodbye to all the most beautiful parts of Iceland. Unlike the “must do” Lava Show, I actually really recommend you give the FlyOver a try. Unfortunately, no cameras allowed, but that’s ok because a photo couldn’t have possibly captured what we were experiencing.
Then it was off to the airport. We stopped and gave those famous hot dogs one more try, this time without the brown crap on top (why do you guys like that??????) and they were much better that way. There you have it. My bucket list trip is completed, however, I miss it so much every single day that I just didn’t have it in me to actually cross it off of my bucket list, and so someday, somehow, I will make it back to Iceland again, because one trip is not enough, and MAYBE after that I can cross it off…
Things I’d like to do on future trips: 1) See the northern lights. 2) Rent a helicopter to fly over an active volcano. 3) Dogsledding. 4) Visit Skool Beans. 5) Visit the Greenhouse Cafe. 6) Hvammsvik. 7) Kayak in the lagoon amongst the glaciers. 8) Boil an egg in a hot spring and bake break in the hot ground. 9) Visit the west fjords. 10) See puffins. 11) Sample more native cuisines. 12) See Dettifoss. 13) Visit the Crepe Shack.
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