stopping in iceland on the way to holland/france

Actually, I believe that Icelandair allows you to stopover in Iceland for no extra cost. If you look at their booking website, there is an option for "Iceland stopover". I haven't done this myself (but I want to sometime). Several friends and family members have done this.

We did that in 2008 and it was easy and fascinating. We had a 25-hour layover (basically, we took the regular connecting flight, but the next day, instead of the day we flew in).

It is USUALLY close to the same price, but there can be variations between one day of the week and another. Do some experimentation. If you want to do Amsterdam/Paris open jaw with a layover and you want the lowest price possible, follow these steps;

1) Do a search for flights to Amsterdam RT around the date you want to go. It gives you a 2-week range of prices for the leg to Amsterdam. Ignore the return fares. Note the cheapest flights within that window of time.

2) Do a search for flights to Paris RT around the date you want to return. Note the best return fares from Paris. Ignore the fares TO Paris. Note the cheapest prices.

3) Now, combinig what you know about cheaper dates for flights TO Amsterdam and flights FROM Paris, pick a time frame that meets your needs for a typical open Jaw flight.

4) Now, do a multi-city flight search starting the day BEFORE. Flight #1 to Reykjavik, flight #2 (the date cheaper flight date you wanted to arrive) to Amsterdam, flight #3 Paris to home.

That should (but no guarantees) give you a low price for the layover, open jaw flight you want.

The problem with skipping steps 1-3 is that the multi-city search does not give you a range of prices. So you have no idea if the dates you choose to check happen to be good price days or not without checking every conceivable option, which is tedious.

Good Luck.

wow--thank you so much! that was extremely helpful! i especially like that it is in list form. :-)