The Golden Circle is the warm-up. Then Iceland gets strange.
Which glacier you can still walk on in October. What the Blue Lagoon costs once the transfer is in. Whether the northern lights coach is worth it or the small jeep is. Reviews of every tour you can book in Iceland.
The south coast, the fissure, the whales and the long west peninsula.
Four days out that a first Iceland trip tends to get built around. What each costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The long day southSouth Coast Waterfalls, Black Sand & Glacier TourTwo waterfalls you walk behind, a black beach and a glacier snout, ten hours out of the city. The day most people say they would do again.
02Between two platesSnorkeling Between Tectonic Plates – Meet on LocationDrysuit snorkelling in glacial meltwater at Silfra, where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart. Visibility runs to a hundred metres.
03Out of the old harbourWhale Watching and Marine Life CruiseThree hours into Faxafloi for minke and humpback. Runs year round, and costs a third of what the big-ticket days do.
04The west peninsulaSnæfellsnes Peninsula Full-Day TourSnaefellsnes in one long loop: the black church, the bird cliffs, Kirkjufell and a glacier on the end of it.
Almost every Iceland day starts as a drive out of Reykjavik.
The island is bigger than it looks on the map and the good things are spread thin along one ring road. Four standard days out, what each one costs to board, and how far down the coast it actually gets you.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Golden Circle Full-Day Tour with Kerid Crater
The Golden CircleGeysir, Gullfoss and Thingvellir in one loop. The short day, and the one to do first.
The south coastSeljalandsfoss, Skogafoss, Reynisfjara. Ten hours, and the longest daylight you will use.
SnaefellsnesA whole country in miniature on one peninsula, two hours north of the city.
The glacier lagoonJokulsarlon and Diamond Beach, five hours each way. Leave early and take the long one.
All 103 days out of Reykjavik →
Eleven percent of Iceland is glacier, and you can walk on a good deal of it.
Crampons and a guide get you onto Solheimajokull or Falljokull inside an hour of leaving the road. In winter the same glaciers open underneath, into caves the meltwater cut and the cold closed again.
In Iceland the calendar decides more than the weather does.
Ice caves are cut by meltwater and only safe once the glacier refreezes, roughly November to March. The aurora needs darkness, so it is off the table from late May to early August, which is exactly when the highland roads open and the sun never really sets. Book the thing that is only there when you are.
Iceland heats its swimming pools with the thing that built the island.
Water comes out of the ground hot here, and where it does somebody has built a place to sit in it. The same plumbing gives you the lava tubes, the crater lakes and a show where they pour molten rock across a room.
What a day out in Iceland actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Iceland is expensive and pretending otherwise helps nobody, but the cheap end is better than its reputation.
Pool and lagoon entries, museums, the Reykjavik walks, whale boats out of the old harbour.
The standard full days: Golden Circle, the south coast, glacier hikes, Silfra, horses.
Ice caves, the glacier lagoon run, snowmobiles, helicopters and the multi-day ring road trips.
Reykjavik is less a destination than a departure board.
Everything in Reykjavik â
Nearly every tour in the country picks up here, which is why most people sleep in Reykjavik and see the rest of Iceland on day release. The city itself takes an afternoon, and it is a good afternoon: a walkable centre, a whale harbour and enough museums to outlast the rain.
The city in two hours
The centre is about twenty minutes across, so the walks trade distance for stories: the settlement, the crash, the elves people will not quite say they disbelieve. The food routes add tastings and run longer.
Whales without leaving town
Boats go out into Faxafloi for minke, humpback and white-beaked dolphins. The north gets better sightings, but this one leaves ten minutes from most hotels and costs a third of a full day out.
The indoor afternoon
It rains sideways here and the museums are the plan rather than the fallback: the settlement exhibition built around a real longhouse wall, the whale hall, the photography collections.
The Iceland days out that fill up before the rest.
Every Iceland tour we have reviewed →The tours more travellers take than anything else on the island, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Golden Circle Full-Day Tour with Kerid Crater
This full-day BusTravel Iceland tour takes you from Reykjavik to Strokkur, Gullfoss, Þingvellir, and Kerið crater. Guides such as Barbara, Andrea, Gary, and Thor add Icelandic stories, geology, folklore, and music. Choose an early departure if you want the best chance of visiting Kerið and avoiding the busiest periods.
From · $82
Read our review →2
Reykjavik Food Walk – Local Foodie Adventure in Iceland
from $146
3
Northern Lights Bus Tour from Reykjavik
from $73
4
South Coast Waterfalls, Black Sand & Glacier Tour
from $126
5
Whale Watching and Marine Life Cruise
from $87
6
Sky Lagoon Entrance Pass With 7-Step Spa Ritual
from $111
7
Golden Circle, Kerid, & Secret Lagoon Tour
from $132
8
Iceland South Coast Full Day Small-Group Tour from Reykjavik
from $139
Three things you can only really do in Iceland.
Waterfalls and hot springs turn up all over the north Atlantic. Snorkelling the gap between two continents, walking inside a glacier, and riding a horse with a gear nobody else has do not.
The Silfra Fissure
Silfra is the gap where the North American and Eurasian plates pull away from each other, filled with meltwater that has spent decades filtering through lava rock. It comes out at two degrees and close to a hundred metres of visibility, which is why people float down it in drysuits with their faces in the water. You are not technically touching both continents at once, whatever the photographs suggest, but the gap is right there under you.
- 1Snorkeling Between Tectonic Plates – Meet on Location★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 5,001 reviews
- 2Silfra Fissure Snorkeling between Two Continents★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,712 reviews
- 3Silfra Drysuit Snorkeling with Free Photos – Meet on Location★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,299 reviews
The Winter Ice Caves
Meltwater cuts tunnels through the glaciers all summer and the cold seals them again in autumn, which is why ice caves are a November-to-March thing and why the cave you visit is rarely the one from last year. Guides re-survey them every season. The blue is not a trick of the light: the ice is so compressed that it absorbs nearly everything except that one colour.
- 1Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,110 reviews
- 2Vatnajökull Ice Cave Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 2,046 reviews
- 3Ice Cave Tour and Glacier Hike★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,746 reviews
The Icelandic Horse
The breed has been here since the settlement and no horse that leaves the country is allowed back, so the bloodline has run clean for a thousand years. It has a fifth gear the rest of the horse world does not, the tolt, a four-beat run so level that riders are filmed carrying a full glass. Most tours out of the city ride the lava fields, which is the terrain the gait was bred for.
- 1Red Lava Horse Riding Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 2,383 reviews
- 2Icelandic Horse Riding Tour in Lava Fields★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,356 reviews
- 3Icelandic Horseback Riding Tour with Pickup Option from Reykjavik★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,145 reviews
Four Iceland bookings that will not wait.
Plenty of this island can be sorted from a guesthouse kitchen the night before. These four run on tides, refreezes, daylight and a cap on how many people fit, and none of them care when your flight lands.
- 01Snorkeling Between Tectonic Plates – Meet on LocationDrysuit slots are capped by guide and the operators need your height and shoe size in advance. Summer mornings go weeks out.
- 02Katla Ice Cave and Super Jeep TourThe caves are only safe once the glacier refreezes and each one takes a handful of people at a time. The season is short and it is the thing most people come for.
- 03Small-Group Golden Circle, Blue Lagoon with Ticket & Kerid CraterEntry is by timed slot and the lagoon sells its own capacity. Turning up without a booking is how people end up not going.
- 04Northern Lights Bus Tour from ReykjavikTours cancel on cloud and rebook you onto the next clear night, so you want several nights of runway rather than one.
Akureyri and Husavik take a fraction of the traffic and land most of the whales.
Six hours from Reykjavik by road and forty minutes by air, the north runs at a different pressure. Husavik was the whaling town and now watches them instead, with the highest sighting rates in the country. Inland there are craters, steam vents, a waterfall the sagas got named after and baths with a tenth of the queue.
Every day out in the north â
Reykjavik holds most of it, and the rest is spread round one road.
A capital you can cross on foot, a northern town on a fjord, a black-sand village under a glacier, a national park at the foot of the icecap, a whaling harbour and the peninsula that has one of everything.
By place — the capital and the ring road
By kind of day — ice, water, horseback or hot spring
Reykjavik, the south coast, the lagoon, the north: the loop most people drive.
The newest Iceland tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Iceland Volcanic Eruption Area Helicopter Tour from Reykjavík
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Magical Whales in the Midnight Sun | from Reykjavik
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Helicopter Tour with Mountain Summit Landing from Reykjavik
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8-Day Iceland Ring Road Tour: Reykjavik, Akureyri, Golden Circle & South Coast
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Reykjavik International Airport Private Arrival Transfer
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Airport Express Shared Arrival Transfer from Keflavik Airport to Reykjavik City
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Askja & Holuhraun, Super Jeep Day Tour from Lake Myvatn
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Northern Lights Classic MiniBus Tour from Akureyri
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Goðafoss Waterfall & Forest Lagoon from Akureyri Port
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Reykjahlid: Snowmobile Adventure by Lake Mývatn
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