Iceland Trip 2026

TL;DR: July Iceland trip, drove south coast out to Diamond Beach and back while stopping at cool sites along on the way. Highly recommend the country, but plan accordingly for weather & prices.

Key notes 🔗︎

• $$$ - food and much else is hella expensive, even at crappy places. Plan accordingly, grocery store meals or similar. Costco food court still cheap 😎
• Kringum app was recommended by a local for finding more spots than ChatGPT will tell you about
• 🌧️ unless you’re lucky with weather, you need an actual waterproof rain jacket. Good chance your current one doesn’t cut it. Waterproof pants could be considered, as well.
  • note: we got super lucky and had a week of basically all dry sunny weather, which I don’t think is the norm.
• 🚗 driving is easy, feels like rural USA in most places.
• Icelandic candy: not a fan. Soooo much licorice flavoring
• It was still light past 11, so consider stretching your days. We did a few hikes at like 10pm when it was less busy.
• neat pizzeria and hostel in a very remote location Hrifunes Pizzeria. Could be a cool place to use as a basecamp for a night
• Become Icelandic, chug Collab energy drinks!
• Some places we missed but which are worth considering:
  • Glymur, multiple friends said it was highlight of their trip. “can’t emphasize enough how cool Glymur is” - Carlos
  • thermal river on the south loop - bring booze & food & chill a while, and there are various hot springs scattered around the ring road
  • Tomato Farm restaurant, but books out super far in advance. “I still dream about that soup” - Dhushyanth
  • Beer spa in Akureyri
  • Glacier hikes
  • Kerið Crater, could hit this on the way back from south loop if you want
  • 🙄 The Penis Museum. I’m told this is less gimmicky and surpisingly not a bad time from skeptical folks, but didn’t go myself.
  • 🧑‍🎤 We wanted to find a Icelandic metal show/bar, but they were all closed during the weekdays.

Full Itinerary 🔗︎

4 people driving in one car through Iceland, Fri night - Thurs afternoon.

Fri 🔗︎

• 9pm flight, 6 hours duration
• ⚠️ warning: icelandair does not serve free meals, bring your own!

Sat 🔗︎

• 9am arrive, hung out in Reykjavik
• Hallgrímskirkja, wander downtown, check out their parliament square, etc.
• We stumbled on a punk concert in a grassy square, maybe you will too!
• ⚠️ stay awake until at least 8pm
• We stumbled on a super quirky townie bar The Icelandic Rockbar. I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way far, but it can’t hurt to stop for one drink with the interesting… regulars - all 5 of them on a Sat night.

Sun 🔗︎

• Drove to stay near Kirkjubæjarklaustur, stopping many times along the way at natural wonders
• Great park Thingvellir, some people snorkel in the freezing water with tour guides! Beautiful valley and cool to see historic seat of parliament
• Geysir, Strokkur geyser erupts every few minutes. Lots of little ones bubbling everywhere as well.
• Gullfoss - huge ole waterfall
• Seljalandsfoss: waterfall you can walk behind. Plus another inside a cool cave, Gljúfrabúi, which you can get to from the same parking spot.
• Skogafoss, cool viewpoint you can climb to at the top and see another smaller waterfall
• Vik is a neat little town.

Mon 🔗︎

• Diamond Beach & Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon
  • you can go on tours of the ice caves and on the boats, but honestly feel like I got 93% of the experience from on shore.
• Stop at various glacier viewpoints, it’s huge and visible from many spots
• Fjallsárlón - similar to Glacier Lagoon, but less busy. Just down the road and also very cool. Heard icebergs calving off the wall here & almost saw one flip (but we had just turned away & missed it 😔)

Tues 🔗︎

• Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach, lots of puffins. Multiple stops you can do in the area to hike around cool cliffs
• Dyrhólaey Nature Reserve & Puffin Cliffs
• Drive back to Reykjavik

Wed 🔗︎

• Explore Reykjavik more.
• Sky lagoon - pricey, but fun experience. A little bit like a factory version of a spa experience. Seemed better than Blue Lagoon. We spent like 4 hours here, but seem people seem to rush through the Ritual you can only do once, which is a choice.
• ‼️SUPER RECOMMEND Mama Reykjavik VEGAN RESTAURANT. Such wholesome people, really good food.
• 👎Íslenski Barinn: we wanted to try Icelandic dishes like whale, but they give you such tiny portions here we each only got 1 bite. If you’re going to try whale, shark, puffin, etc., look somewhere else.

Thurs 🔗︎

• volcano hikes near KEF. Wished we left more time for volcano hikes, but also no live magma when we went.
• Bláalónsvegur Road Lavafield is a cool stop on the way to Grindavik, you can walk around on the old road which got partially covered with lava & had to be re-routed.
• Nátthagi Valley was easy walk from the parking place to see newer lava flows.
• Grindavik is surreal to drive through now that it’s been mostly evacuated.
• The volcano levees are a cool feat of human engineering.
• flew home afternoon