My trip to Iceland

Planning

For our Icelandic trip we wanted to visit as much as we could in 7 days. Usually people say that you need 10 days to be able to visitng the most turistic places but sadly we didn’t have enough time. We rented a car, some sleeping bags and some camping equipment and we were good to go !

Day uno

Iceland is the type of country that feels magical. From the first moment I got out of the plane I felt incredible, people were super nice, the air felt fresher, everyone was ready to help and you could feel that they were really accustomed to toursits (I even heard a story about a guy that got rescued like 3 times during winter…). The first impression I had was very positive.

On our first day we got our car, it was supposed to be a RAV4, but we ended up with a Suzuki Vitara, which is also very nice, and to be honest I know nothing about cars, I just wanted one that was 4x4 for the road ahead. After we got our car we went straight to Reyjavik, landed in a pizza place, yes, pizza was the first thing we ate in Iceland, had a nice meal and went bought some groceries for our trip.

Before it got dark we got to see Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, amazing view ! Impossible not to take a good picture there. We stayed there until dark and camped right next to the waterfall, ~30 euros per night for 3 persons.

Seljandsfoss Waterfall

Some late evening tea

Day two

Our second day started quite early, we were up and running at about 7 a.m., well, the fact that it was the first night in a long time that we hadn’t slept in a sleeping bag helped us wake up easily. Our first stop was the Solheimasandur Plane Wreck ! To be fairly honest, this plane wreck is pretty cool but you need to walk for about 1h30 before you get there, and then of course you need to walk back, so I’ll let you judge if it’s worth it or not. After that we continued to Reynishverfisvegur a.k.a. the Black Beach because its sand is made out of volcanic rock. Beautiful to watch, you might even grab lunch there and chill for a little while.

That night we camped at the Skaftafell preservation area, on our way there we visited the Fjaðrárgljúfur Canyon (yeah, try to pronounce that) which is the starting point for a trek route that I think goes all the way to the Landmannalaugar natural reserve. Once we got to Skaftafell we went on a 3 hour trek that goes next to an amazing waterfall and it ends at the beginning of one of the glaciers, it’s breath-taking.

Skaftafell glacier

Day three

We had a difficult start this day, at least I did, I was very tired since I hadn’t gotten used to our sleeping arrangements so , in the morning, a good cup of coffee was necessary ! The facilities in Skaftafell were very well equipped. There was a very nice restaurant where we ate breakfast and drank some coffee. We did have a small problem though, the showers weren’t working in the whole camping site. To make it even worse, we hadn’t had a shower yet (yeah, 3 smelly guys travelling together), but more on that in a little bit.

We grabbed our stuff and hit the road, we had a few hours to get to Seydisfjorður, where we wanted to spend the night. On our way there we stopped at Jökulsárlón - Glacier Lagoon, amazing place, beautiful scenerie, we grabbed lunch in a small town called Höfn and then we went straight continued all the way to Djúpivogur.

Up until now we had been travelling for 2 days and a half without showering, I know that when you’re hiking this doesn’t seem like much but we weren’t hiking, we were spending a lot of time in the vehicle ! We decided to take a little time off from the road so that’s when we stopped at Djúpivogur, where we found a municipal swimming pool. This was great news ! We showered, relaxed in the jacuzzi and even swam for a little bit. After that we went straight to our last stop of the day. Pro tip : Highway 1 going from south to east of the island is amazing, the scenerie is just incredible. There’s also a small shortcut through road 939 that’s definitely worth doing, it’s a little bit dangerous if it’s raining but you get to see some beautiful places, you might even want to stop to take some pictures along the way.

Jökulsárlón - Glacier Lagoon

Seydisfjorður town

Day four

Day four was packed ! We had so much to do to in order not to fall so much behind schedule. Our itinerary for the day was : Hrossaborg ( where the film Oblivion was shot), Dettifoss ( the AMAZING waterfall from the film Prometheus), Krafla Power Plant (pretty cool retro-looking energy plant), Viti, Hverarond (some geysers), Hverfjall (an old volcanic crater), Góðafoss, Lake Myvatn and Akureyri where we were going to spend the night. I’m not going to describe each of these places because it’s already a pretty long post but I swear they are all worth visiting , or Googling :P.

The geysers were pretty amazing, it’s the first time I had seen one, just standing there watching them and listening to the bursting sound when the water jumped in the air was very relaxing for me, I wanted to stay there longer just to enjoy the calm moment but we had so much to do.

Akureyri is a beautiful city, I think the second largest in Iceland. People seemed super nice and the camping site we stayed at was small but with everything you might need. We met a couple of Germans that were travelling by bike, I think they were doing a tour of the whole island ! That’s amazing, it seemed like a great adventure ! Definitely something I would like to try one day with a little bit more time on my hands.

Day five

We had some road to cover, we needed to get to Reyjavik before nightfall but we also wanted to see a couple of things before getting there, Gullfoss and one of the biggets geysirs in Iceland. Eventhough we spent 7 hours on the road, I had a lot of fun, we had to cut through the inner part of the island where most of the roads are made out of gravel, it was slower but the sights were beautiful. Gullfoss was very nice, not as impressive as Dettifoss but still worth visiting. We stayed there for about half an hour, grabbed some coffe and then continued non-stop to Reyjavik.

Once we got there, we found a camping site right in the middle of the city, which was great because we wanted to have one night of partying before our vacations were over. So that night we went out, we had a few drinks at the Micro bar downtown, then we met some foreigners (two french, one german and one english) at another bar nearby, talked to them for a while until we starterd to get hungry. I forgot the name of the fastfood restaurant were we bought some sandwiches but they were so delicious ! While we were eating the best sandwiches in the world (yeah, I had a few drinks so maybe that has something to do with them being so good) we met some locals outside. They invited us to the a club nearby, we went there, danced for a little while and then headed back to the camping site.

Day six/seven

It was so hard to get up ! After 5 days of travelling and then a night of partying, waking up to get ready was nearly impossible. That day, one of my friends had a flight to catch to the US, and we also needed to return the Suzuki we rented. So we got up, we showered, had breakfast at a super hipster restaurant and then the first of us left. For the rest of the day my other friend and I walked around Reyjavik visiting what we didn’t have time to see the first day we got there. We walked around all day, we went to the Harpa Conbcert Hall, we walked around inside and then we took a nap (there’s a great place to chill in the second floor). We stayed there for a couple of hours, we went out to eat something and came back because we heard there was going to be a concert.

That same night we had booked a couple of tickets to go the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa. It was the perfect way to end the trip, we relaxed from 11 p.m. until 1 a.m., we went back to the bus station, we waited a couple of hours and then we took the bus to the airport. By now the only thing we wanted to do was to sleep, but it was the end of our trip so we knew that we had time to rest in the plane back home. We got to the airport, checked in and then we both headed our on way.

I had an amazing time in Iceland. We chose to do the more turistic parts of iceland by car but I will definitely go back and do some hiking around the parts we didn’t get to see very well. The whole country is beautiful, every few kilometers you want to stop and take pictures because it really looks like some magical land taken out from a fairy tale. I definitely wish that I would’ve had more time to visit all the places I didn’t get to see, or just to go hiking. Maybe next year !

Thanks for reading ! I hope you consider visiting Iceland, you won’t regret it one bit.