jeff191

You should be fine. I just got back 2 days ago and had a car for a week there. They accepted my US drivers license without any questions.

Out of my Element

Any license with English characters is acceptable in Iceland

yulmichael

jeff and OomE,
Thank you very much for the info.
Michael

paperwastage

Been skimming this thread



Solo trip, first time in Iceland for 5 days
Wed 11/16 Noon ->Mon 11/21 5pm

Not long enough for a ring-road trip. Main goal is to see Northern Lights
Coming from London, so no jetlag issues

(yes, car+petrol=expensive, winter=can be bad weather for driving)
so rent car vs tours? hmm


Wed - land, explore+overnight Reykjavik/nearby
Thur - Golden Circle, explore
Fri - ???
Sat - ???
Sun - ???, drive back to Reykjavik
Mon - blue lagoon 9-12pm, shuttle to airport, fly out 5pm


doing more research. nature is fine for me

Out of my Element

Friday to Sunday take a 2 day South Coast tour that gets you to Jokulsarlon. You won't be able to do the boat tour, but it's breathtaking there. Take a tour, don't drive yourself as you do not want to be caught out there if a storm comes up.

paperwastage

any reason to do it on weekend?

Out of my Element

Those were the days you listed as open

paperwastage

any opinions about doing a snorkelling(silfa)+golden circle day trip, or snorkeling+lava-caving?

think scuba.is and dive.is offers such a combo


or should I separate them out



there are 3-day tours available (day1=golden circle, overnight near vik, day2&3 = Jokulsarlon)
might maximize chances of northern lights

Wed - arrive KEF
Thurs - Sat = 3day tour
Sun - explore Reykjavik
Mon - Blue Lagoon + flight out

henry999

Iceland has some remarkable features and is well worth a visit. However, it bears repeating: make sure it is absolutely clear in your mind before you get off the plane that everything you buy is going to be bloody expensive. Otherwise, each time you pay a bill you’ll have the feeling that you’re getting ripped off.

Mrs 999 and I recently spent a long weekend there, with another couple. We had one night out carousing, late; we had a day seeing the sights of Reykjavik: the Hallgrimskirkja*; a street-fair in Vikurgardur, the National Museum, a show at the Harpa, and so on; and a day with a rented car, where we put on 400+ km: the Glymur waterfall (highest in the country). the fishing village of Olafsvik, and a lot of tundra. (*By the way, speaking of Hallgrimskirkja … by all means, go — but save yourself some money and skip the tower. The windows at the top are very small and you have to get right up close in order to see out; there is no sense of ‘panorama’ at all. It’s actually like looking out the window of an aeroplane about five seconds before landing.)

The Icelanders are pleasant people. They are clever enough to understand that it is tourism that has brought them back from the economic nightmare that followed the banking scandal(s) of the last decade, and people dealing with visitors are not at all surly they way they are in, for example, some Eastern European countries. But they are Nordic, after all, so don’t expect ‘nice, helpful’ to necessarily extend to ‘warm, friendly’.

And then we come to the language. In Germany, France, Spain, Italy, etc., waiters, hotel clerks and other tourist-industry staff will sometimes take refuge in their local dialect when speaking with each other — but while doing so they know that some greater-or-lesser percentage of the foreign devils standing before them will have some greater-or-lesser understanding of the standard form of the language; thus, they must be a least a bit circumspect in what they say. The Icelanders know that almost none of the tourists they deal with have more than a handful of Icelandic words, maybe. One of the people in our group is Icelandic and sometimes she quite intentionally refrained from saying anything at all when she might have been heard by the staff — so that they had no reason to even suspect that she could understand what they were saying. She told us later that there were several situations where the staff were saying things about the customers which definitely would not have pleased the boss, if he had known.

Finally, one of the trendy pubs in Reykjavik that you’ll hear a lot about is Mikkeller & Friends. I’d say that unless you’re happy to pay 13 euros for a 40 cl. glass of nothing-special beer, you can give that one a miss.

mlbcard

Planning a 7-day trip to Iceland in July. I'll be going with my young kids, so not much in the way of drinking at bars or strenuous hikes. We were not planning on spending more than a morning in Reykjavik. Is that enough time to do the ring road and catch the highlights? (I don't mind the extra-driving, it might give the kids some nap time in the middle of the day)

Out of my Element

7 days is an express Ring Road trip, you'll miss as much as you'll see. 7 days gives you time to do half the country really well, including activities for the kids.

Check out the TripAdvisor Iceland forum for ridiculous amounts of advice on a trip like this.

747FC

1/2 day in Reykjavik? What are you planning on doing in those parts? Seems a bit rushed...

jeff191

I did the ring road in 6 days and it honestly didn't feel rushed. It's only ~900-1000 miles depending on side trips so it's not as much driving as you'd think. We got to Reykjavik early morning and spent first day at Blue Lagoon, the wandering around Reykjavik. Then we did 6 days on the road and came back early afternoon to Reykjavik and spent rest of day and next morning before catching flight. So it was 8 nights in total.

We spent a lot more time at sites than the numerous tour buses we encountered, they truly stopped and everyone took pictures for an hour, then they were back on the road. We were making multiple stops at attractions each day and would get to hotels ~8pm. Then breakfast next day and back on road. We didn't take any real time to "relax" in each town but they were relatively small so we didn't feel like we missed too much.

So it's definitely doable but depending on your vacation style it may feel rushed. We tend to be on the go and usually will do 3 countries in a week so 8 days total wasn't rushed at all. FWIW, my son was 8 and he didn't have any issues with the drive.

Out of my Element

Those side trips make all the difference! Dettifoss is a 90 minute trip from the Ring Road, Hverfjall is 10 minutes off of the ring road but an amazing 2 hour (or longer) adventure. Husaik is 50 kilometers from the Ring Road, but worth the stop and these are just the detours from the Myvatn area.

You'll certainly see awesome things on a quick Ring Road trip, but you'll see much of that through car windows. Iceland is really worth slowing down for and some of the best things are "just around that corner over there".

mlbcard

Thanks for the advice. I'm ok driving around, but maybe the western half of the country would work better. I didn't know how much kid friendly things would be in Reykjavik, so didn't think we'd want to spend too much of our short trip there. The point of the trip is to see the natural sights.