Iceland Trip 2026

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0000

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

Iceland on Kevin Quinn

Iceland Trip 2026

Key notes

Full Itinerary

Fri

Sat

Sun

Mon

Tues

Wed

Thurs