Hello,
We are planning a 2 week driving tour of Iceland in the latter half of June. Two of us with a 10 year old. My expectations when I started the planning was that it might not be so difficult to sift through the forum and come up with an itinerary. It's been a struggle though, haha.
We are frequent travelers to mainland Europe where we have exclusively depended on public transport. For the first time we would be using a rental car outside of US. Also, for the first time we find our planning straying from our usual method of having 4-5 day long bases (we dislike having to pack/unpack frequently.) I am sensing it might even be efficient to do 1-2 night stops along the way so as not to backtrack unless one is near a cluster of sights. We therefore have an initial draft that looks like this, going clockwise.
2 nights, Snaefellsness Peninsula. A night each in Arnarstapi & Stykkisholmur? We would drive to Anarstapi directly from the airport. I was originally thinking of doing an overnight in Borgarnes and skipping Snaefellsness.
1 night, Siglufjordur.
2 nights, Myvatn. Originally, instead of Snaefellsness I had an overnight in Akureyri. Now I am feeling that a good sized stop there during the day might do.
2 nights, Seydisfjordur. Could I instead do a night here and a night in Borgarfjordur Eystri? I am a sucker for charming villages in beautiful settings but I don't want to be stupidly ambitious. I gather driving around this area is challenging.
2 nights, Hofn or thereabout.
2 nights, Vik or thereabout. I am vaguely contemplating if it is possible to do a night here, and a night in Westman island. I will create a separate post to explore that.
3 nights Reykjavik. Hoping to have a hiking day in Landmannalaugar. Given the time of the year I was hoping to just hire a normal car. Instead of renting a big SUV to simply accomodate this particular trip, perhaps it's advisable to drive to Hella and do a bus roundtrip from there? It seems possible to use the Trex buses to get up to 8 hours of time in Landmannalaugar, sufficient I imagine for a good length day hike if one's recommended.
Any comments/opinion on this itinerary would be highly appreciated. If I need to shift days around to make all these venues possible. Maybe take a day out of Reykjavik and situate ourselves somewhere that makes the Landmannalaugar trip more viable. Or if I need to simply take something out, etc.
Thanks!