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Iceland Road Trip: Our 2-Week Itinerary

It’s been four years since our last Iceland road trip and we have another one coming up in October. I figured it was about time that I stopped procrastinating and started writing a blog post about our past itinerary while plotting the next one. It’s not a perfect itinerary and we did have to backtrack a couple of times, but it’s completely doable if you go between May and August and it allowed us to see a lot of Iceland. I wouldn’t recommend this itinerary for a winter trip because of the limited hours of daylight, potentially poor road condition, and tendency for sketchy weather.

We spent 13 nights on the road (and 2 nights in Reykjavik at the end of the trip) in May of 2013, driving the ring road anti-clockwise. We didn’t have enough time to visit the Westfjords, unfortunately. Someday we’ll get around to exploring the Westfjords and experiencing its wild and amazing landscapes first-hand. In the meantime, I’ll just keep dreaming about it. :-)

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Reykjavik: A Lovely Autumn Day in October

We took advantage of Icelandair’s free Iceland stopover programme and had a lovely two-night stay in Reykjavik in October on our way back to Canada from our two-week road trip around Scotland. We arrived on the same day Hurricane Nicole arrived in Iceland! It made for an interesting flight with two aborted landings before we finally touched down safely on the tarmac of the Keflavik airport.

After we got all our luggage back, which took forever due to the bad weather, we hopped on a shuttle bus for the 45 minute drive to the heart of Reykjavik. There are two companies that run shuttle busses from the airport to Reykjavik and vice versa, but we’ve always gone with Grayline because they charged slightly less than the other company. We’ve been quite pleased with their service so far.

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Planning a Trip to Iceland in April

We’re going to Iceland in April! This will be our second trip to Iceland. The trip-planning has been so much easier than the first time around for sure. I remember feeling quite overwhelmed when I was planning our first trip in 2013. So much to see, so little time! (You can’t see everything Iceland has to offer in just two weeks, unfortunately.) Though not being able to afford to rent a 4×4 vehicle did help simplify our plans a little bit.

Having been to Iceland before, we already know what to expect and what we want to see, where to go, how to get there and so on. Well, at least we kind of know what to expect. We’ve never been to Iceland in April before and googling “Iceland in April” didn’t really bring any results that could satisfy my curiosity or that basically said “go to Iceland in April, it’s the best time ever!” which is what I’d really like to hear. ;-)

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8 Good Reasons to Visit Iceland in May

We had the pleasure of travelling around Iceland in May for two weeks, back in 2013. It was amazing and I would attribute it to the month of May, definitely one of the best times to visit Iceland. Springtime in general is great for travelling. In fact, it’s my most favourite time for a road trip. The temperature is getting warmer, the day is getting longer, and I just love seeing nature arising from its deep, winter slumber everywhere I go. A road trip in Iceland in the springtime is indeed my idea of a perfect vacation!

We didn’t really know what to expect from Iceland, let alone Iceland in May, before our trip. Iceland wasn’t as popular a destination in 2013 as it is now. There weren’t really that many resources online the we could use to plan our trip. We pretty much just booked our flights, picked an itinerary we found online, booked our accommodations based on the itinerary, rented a car, threw caution to the wind, and did it. I wrote this article based on our findings from the trip, which I hope you’ll find helpful in your own trip-planning.

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Amazing Places to See in the Golden Circle, Iceland

The Golden Circle, Iceland was our destination on our first full day in Iceland. After having our first Icelandic breakfast at the farm in Selfoss where we had stayed for the night, we received personal recommendations from our host on attractions around the area that are worthy of a visit. And then off to the Golden Circle we went!

Like most of the days we spent in Iceland, it was wet and windy. It was also a little chilly, but we’re Canadian. Anything above zero degree is not worth complaining about. ;-) I think the average temperature during our stay was around 6° Celsius.

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Iceland Attractions: My Recommendations, Part 1

It had been three months since our trip to Iceland so I guess it’s about time that I write something about it, or at least about my favourite Iceland attractions. I had been putting off writing it down, partly because I didn’t think my words could do justice to the experience, and partly because I hated to admit that it was all over. I think my husband is tired of hearing me lament about how badly I want to go back to Iceland like I’ve been doing since the day we were back in Canada.

I don’t think I’ll be able to write every single detail of the trip, but I can surely recommend a few things to those thinking of visiting Iceland in the future or researching for a trip there. I had a lot of fun reading a lot of blog posts about Iceland while researching for our trip and I’m writing this hoping that someone out there will have as much fun reading my post. I’m going to write down my recommendations/favourite Iceland attractions in a few installments.

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The Scottish Borders: Definitely Worth Exploring

We spent the last four nights of our Scotland trip in autumn last year in the Scottish Borders. Staying in a rustic cottage near the town of Selkirk, we were not only close to the main attractions in the Scottish Borders, but also to England. We had spent most of our trip driving around the north coast of Scotland. The Scottish Borders were definitely a nice change of sceneries and pace.

There were so many Scottish Borders attractions that I wanted to see. Unfortunately some of them were already closed for the season in mid-October. I really should have done a better job researching the the Scottish Borders attractions before our visit. We seem to have missed a lot of amazing sights! Admittedly, we only had one full day to explore the region and most if not all attractions had shorter opening hours in October (if open at all). We did thoroughly enjoy the few that we managed to visit.

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How to Plan a Road Trip Around Iceland on a Budget

So you’ve always wanted to go on a road trip around Iceland but you don’t want to blow your budget too much. Well, you’re in luck! Having visited Iceland on a budget before, I have a few practical tips to share that you might find helpful in your trip-planning. They’re all based on common sense, really, so I wouldn’t claim them to be mind-blowing. :-)

Airfares, accommodations, car rental, gas, and food are usually the costliest parts of a road trip. If you spend less money on those sectors, you could potentially stretch your budget a little further. It would in turn allow you to stay in Iceland longer to see more of this amazing country. Trust me, you want to stay longer. We spent two weeks on our first road trip around Iceland and we still wished we could’ve stayed longer!

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Iceland in Late October: Another Road Trip Plan

We spent two nights in Reykjavik, Iceland in late October last year on our way back from Scotland. All the time I was there, I was wishing I had been somewhere outside the city, surrounded by the out-of-this-world natural landscape that Iceland is famous for. Nothing against Reykjavik, mind you. It’s actually one of my favourite cities in the world, if not THE most favourite. I just like nature more. I tried to talk the husband into renting a car for a day but he was set on spending the whole stopover in Reykjavik. Oh well. Can’t say I didn’t try.

We have done a road trip around Iceland before in May 2013. It was the best trip ever, and the best two weeks I’ve ever spent travelling. We’d been dreaming of doing another Iceland road trip ever since we got back from that trip. Unfortunately, in the years that followed, the Canadian dollar only got considerably weaker and the Icelandic krona stronger. We’d had accepted the fact that we would have to save up for a little bit longer to be able to afford another trip around Iceland.

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Planning an Epic Road Trip Through Scotland

We had to cancel our April trip to France and Iceland due to a cancer scare. After over a month of worrying like crazy, we found out it was just a benign tumor–thank goodness! But I figured, we should still go somewhere to celebrate the non-cancer diagnosis and the husband’s milestone birthday. So, as soon as I received the final diagnosis, I started planning another trip.

Our destination shortlist included Iceland (again!), Wales, the Azores, and Scotland. A trip to Iceland ended up being too expensive for our liking. Wales is too fussy. The Azores seem lovely and is the cheapest destination of all, but in the end, I decided to save it for another time. The thing is, after doing tonnes of research, I found out that Scotland is actually less expensive than Iceland–at least in terms of accommodations and car rentals–and is just as stunning. Plus, the husband loves Scotland. He went there 13 years ago and still couldn’t stop talking about it. Scotland it is then!