The perfect trip planning for a vacation in Iceland probably looks different for everyone. Someone flying to Reykjavík for the first time will plan their trip differently than someone who has been here several times and is planning a round trip around the island. You could also not plan at all and just go with the flow, which can be great too, but in this post I want to share some tips with all of you who like to be perfectly prepared.
Let’s go…
Why and how to plan your vacation in Iceland
My very first trip to Iceland was completely unplanned. I booked the flight tickets because they were cheap, got a rental car a few days before the trip, and that was it. At the airport I bought a travel guide that I picked up maybe once or twice. I saw the usual sights along Iceland’s south coast, I raced through the east — which seemed boring to me back then — and spent a bit more time in the north instead. If you had asked me after the trip whether I felt I had missed anything, I would have just smiled wearily.
On that trip I knew nothing about the Golden Circle. I had no idea it existed, where it was or what there was to see there. I also had no clue about the plane wreck on the south coast or Seljavallalaug. During the entire trip I didn’t visit a single hot pot. The trip was still wonderful, of course, and I would do it exactly the same way again anytime: even back then I knew it wouldn’t be my last stay in Iceland.
In my opinion, there are two reasons why you would and should plan your vacation after all:
- You don’t see yourself in this travel mode, you’ll probably only visit Iceland once, and you want to make the most of your time there.
- You’re in Iceland for the second or third time and are now looking for very specific things or places — or simply something off the beaten track.
This post is probably aimed more at the second group. I want to share a few tips for experienced Iceland travelers that might open up some new possibilities here and there.
Websites for planning your Iceland trip
For planning my trips, I use websites, apps and electronic gadgets more and more these days: I’m a self-confessed nerd. Maybe that’s exactly what I find so fascinating about Iceland: the raw nature as a contrast to my very digital everyday life.
Anyway, here are my tips:
Getting there: booking a cheap flight to Iceland
To find cheap flights, I use search engines like Opodo and Skyscanner. Pretty straightforward and probably nothing new for most readers. I then check the websites of Play and Icelandair to see whether the flights are cheaper there or whether there are any promotions or discounts. I also try to be flexible with my travel dates: sometimes there are price differences of more than 100€ between two flights within just a few days.
There’s one rather exotic travel hack I like to use: since I don’t really care whether I fly out of Berlin or Frankfurt in Germany, I check whether an open-jaw flight is a cheap option. On one trip I flew from FRA to KEF and back home to TXL: that flight was more than 100€ cheaper than the regular round trip.
Getting around: booking a rental car in Iceland
I’ve already written quite a bit about rental cars in Iceland, so just briefly: when looking for a rental car, I always use several comparison sites like Billiger Mietwagen*, GuidetoIceland* or Check24* and look at all the available offers.
In the end I pick one of the offers, but I rely almost entirely on my gut feeling. As long as the price difference isn’t too big, I would always prefer a slightly more expensive offer if I have a good feeling about the provider.
Research: websites all about Iceland
Ideally, this site here is your first stop for research. My ambition is to make this the best website about Iceland in the long run, and I hope that shows to some extent. If you have specific questions or would like to see a post about certain topics or places, feel free to write me or leave a comment!
Of course there are many, many others covering Iceland, and I’d like to list some of them here. Most of them are in English, but that shouldn’t put you off. Once you’re there, English is what you’ll get by with anyway.
I follow websites covering current events in Iceland via my feed reader Feedly. That mainly includes Reykjavik Grapevine and Iceland Monitor. Both are aimed primarily at expats, i.e. English-speaking newcomers to Iceland.
Which brings us to the blogs of expats in Iceland. I find Dearheima particularly beautiful, in the truest sense of the word. Especially the graphic design and the pictures on Instagram are really great. Kaelene runs Unlocking Kiki, another great travel blog about Iceland. Especially on the topic of traveling with kids, there will probably be a lot to read there in the near future 😉 I also enjoy reading Lifewithaview, where Jeannie writes about her life in Iceland.
Accommodation: guesthouses, farm stays and hotels in Iceland
There are so many different ways to spend the night in Iceland that you should definitely do your research on several platforms. If you only search for hotels, you might miss out on wonderful guesthouses. On top of that, the same places often cost different amounts on different platforms.
For hotels I exclusively use Booking.com, simply because I feel very comfortable there as a customer. I also list my own vacation apartment in the Westerwald there. For farm stays, special guesthouses and unique places to sleep, I discovered HeyIceland. The company has a strong focus on sustainability. I still use AirBNB, but not as often as I used to. On the one hand, the company has lost too much of its community spirit for my taste, and on the other hand, the prices these days are often rather, let’s say, optimistic… On the travel blog 101places, Tina and Patrick have put together some great alternatives for finding hotels (in German).
Inspiration: Instagram & Pinterest accounts I follow
I mainly use my own Instagram and Pinterest accounts to follow others and am not as active there myself as I would like to be.
Short and sweet, here are some accounts I follow on Instagram:
I follow many more — you can check out the complete list on our Instagram account.
On Pinterest I’m even less active. There I mainly follow other travel bloggers like 22places, Unlockingkiki and lifewithaview15.
Both platforms are perfect for stocking up on wanderlust!
Helpful websites while you’re there: northern lights, traffic and weather
While in Iceland, I use a few websites that not everyone may know — or that many people don’t realize hold such great information.
Let’s start with the little helpers: there’s a map of all gas stations in Iceland, including operator and price. The operator can be important because many rental car companies in Iceland partner with a specific chain and get a discount there.
Important and unimportant at the same time: the Icelandic weather service Vedur. Important because this is where you’ll find the weather forecast and, above all, weather warnings, which are worth their weight in gold when planning on the ground. When I’m in Iceland, I check the site at least every morning and evening, usually more often. Unimportant because: if you rely solely on the forecast, you might be in for a nasty surprise. In Iceland you always have to expect changing weather and be prepared for anything. The website still helps, of course!
Besides cloud cover, temperatures and rain forecasts, you can also find an overview of earthquakes, iceberg sightings and air quality data here.
When it comes to traffic in Iceland, www.road.is is the first place to go. The homepage is especially important: this is where travel warnings are displayed whenever there are any. Be sure to check this site daily as well, morning and evening.
On the overview page you’ll find the weather conditions for the different regions. For almost every road there’s also an info box showing various numbers: the number in the top left, in red, is the temperature. The two numbers next to it are the wind speed or gusts and the wind direction. The numbers below show how many cars have driven there in the last 10 minutes and since midnight.
Regarding the wind, you could say: 0–8 is a (light) breeze, 8–18 is windy, and anything above that should be treated with caution. Depending on the scale, 18 to 25 counts as a (tropical) storm, and from 33 upwards you’d be talking about a hurricane.
What many people don’t know: besides the road condition info, Vegagerdin also offers a map with webcams where you can check the road conditions live. Most stations have 2–6 webcams that deliver pictures in all directions every fifteen minutes. Here you can see whether there’s snow on the route you want to drive, whether it has rained in the last few hours, or whether the road is a gravel track.
For many, the most important website when it comes to weather phenomena: the aurora forecast for Iceland. Here you can not only see the predicted strength of solar activity, but above all the clouds: the northern lights are actually active almost all the time, sometimes more, sometimes less — the reason you see them so rarely is mainly that clouds keep moving in front of them. So if you’re planning to hunt for the northern lights, pick spots that are expected to get little cloud cover.
The Iceland app also helps you not to miss any northern lights: in the app, users can report when they see the aurora, and you can get notified about it. Whenever a sighting has been confirmed by another user, all users who haven’t turned this feature off receive a notification. You can then see exactly on the map when and where the northern lights were visible and head out if you like.
An extremely exciting and fairly new project is the Live Aurora Network. This is a team of northern lights enthusiasts who have set up cameras in various places around the country and stream the footage live on their YouTube channel. That way you can not only check live whether the northern lights are out, but also rewatch the footage at your leisure the next day. A fantastic project, if you ask me!
Before this project came along, I used the webcams from Livefromiceland. Their quality is rather poor though, so really only on the one in Þingvellir National Park could you sometimes make out a green shimmer 😉
Apps for planning your Iceland trip
First and foremost — at least that’s my ambition — you should install the Iceland app for your trip planning and the trip itself. We’ve put a lot of work into the app, hoping it will help people traveling in Iceland. That includes myself, of course: one of the reasons I started the app back then was that I had always wished for a certain kind of app when traveling, but it simply didn’t exist.
On the one hand, I wanted something like a “local in a pocket” — someone who knows the area and can show it to me and explain it. But not like a printed travel guide that I have to keep pulling out of my backpack; more like an audio guide like the ones you know from museums: I get information and can listen to it, pause it or turn it off. Exactly when, where and, above all, how I want: those are the audio tours in the Iceland app.
There are also various POIs (points of interest), for which we use different sources: our own favorite places, hotels from Booking.com and gas stations from Gasvaktin. On top of that, we’ve integrated Openstreetmap and Wikipedia: the data is sometimes poorly structured and can seem messy, but it has often helped me, especially when exploring. That way I sometimes find places that really aren’t in any travel guide and are often not even known to Icelanders: in the Eastfjords I found an abandoned farm that our host didn’t know about. Even her grandfather had only ever known it in its abandoned state!
Enough self-promotion — there are indeed a few other apps that will serve you well in Iceland. First and foremost, the 112 Iceland app. In my view, it’s a must for every Iceland traveler, especially for hikers and solo travelers. Not only can you send an emergency call that automatically transmits your location to the rescue services, you can also do a check-in that reports your last known position: should something happen, the rescuers already have a starting point for where to look.
If you go hiking, riding or cycling on your own: it’s best to let someone know that you’re out and where you’re headed. A note in the car or hotel room is already enough.
The Vedur app (Android / iPhone) is also helpful because it uses less data than the mobile website.
For everyone out and about in Reykjavik who wants a drink without going broke: Appy Hour (Android / iPhone) tells you where the beer is currently cheap.
The app Wapp was developed for hikers, but is apparently no longer maintained and doesn’t seem to work on more recent devices.
Gadgets for your trip to Iceland
If, like me, you’re excited about the digital possibilities while traveling, there’s no way around a few pieces of equipment.
First the basics: I always have my MacBook* with me, my smartphone* and often a camera*.
Beyond that, I always have the right cables in my backpack so I can charge anywhere. And to make “anywhere” truly anywhere, I bought an external power bank years ago. I really use it rarely, but it has saved my behind once or twice already, which makes it probably the most important gadget in my backpack.
Here you’ll also find a detailed packing list for Iceland.
Conclusion: planning your Iceland trip
I hope I was able to give you a few valuable tips as well as some insight into how I, as a regular guest in Iceland, plan my trips there.
I try to plan my trips better and better these days. Mainly because that allows me to throw the plan overboard without being completely clueless afterwards. That may sound strange, but a planned trip helps me be more spontaneous, because I no longer have to spend so much time on research while I’m there: I can, but I don’t have to.
Of course I’m also interested in your tips and tricks: feel free to send me an email or leave a comment! 🙂
Have fun in Iceland!
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