1 week in Iceland itinerary
Iceland is great in each season, I decided to go in summer to take advantage of the long day and the nice fresh weather. Summer is the high season, make sure to book your accommodations and flights early enough.
Route 1 or the Ring Road is a national road in Iceland that runs around the island and connects most of the inhabited parts of the country. The total length of the road is 1,332 kilometers. Some of the most popular tourist attractions in Iceland, such as the Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss waterfalls, Dyrhólaey and the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon, are by the Ring Road. Four days are enough to complete the road trip but I advice to spend at least 7 days on the road also to increase the chances of having days with sun and to fully relax. I decided to do the ring road counter clock wise for no particular reasons.
Day 1 - Golden Circle and Sellfoss
We spend the first day on the golden circle a popular tourist route in southern Iceland, covering about 300 kilometres (190 mi) looping from Reykjavík into the southern uplands of Iceland and back.
The three primary stops on the route are the Þingvellir National Park, the Gullfoss waterfall, and the geothermal area in Haukadalur, which contains the geysers Geysir and Strokkur. We stopped at Sellfoss over night and enjoyed a typical Icelandic dinner.
Day 2 - Southern Iceland
The second day we covered a lot of kilometers Traveling from Selloffs until Seydisfjordur. A lot of point of interests are located on this route, here the things you cannot miss:
Seljalandsfoss Waterfall
Skógafoss
Skaftafell
Jökulsárlón
After 10+ hours of driving we arrived in Seydisfjordur, a lovely town on the eastern coast, where we stayed 2 nights.
Day 3 - Puffins and Hiking
On day 3 we drove to Borgarfjörður Eystri and small town where a colony of Puffins is living. After enjoying a good Icelandic Lamb soup we went back to Seydisfjordur and hiked around the village.
Day 4 - Dettifoss - Myvatn - Hverfjall
Dettifoss is the most powerful waterfall in Europe, probably my favorite waterfall of the entire trip.
Mývatn is a shallow eutrophic lake situated in an area of active volcanism in the north of Iceland, not far from Krafla volcano. The lake and its surrounding wetlands have an exceptionally rich fauna of waterbirds, especially ducks. Unfortunately most of the day the weather didn’t allow us to enjoy the lake but behind the windshield it looked amazing.
Late in the afternoon we climbed Hverfjall (also known as Hverfell) a tephra cone or tuff ring volcano in northern Iceland, to the east of Mývatn where we enjoyed the view of the lake and the other volcanos.
Day 5 - Húsavík - Akureyri - Whales
It rained all morning so we had to enjoy the landscape again from our car, fortunately in the afternoon it got better and we had the chance to visit Akureyri, the capital of the north and to go whale watching.
Day 6 - Hvitserkur - Seals - Horses
On our last day on the road we travelled back to Reykjavik, on our way we stopped many time to take pictures with horses, sheep, seals an Hvítserkur a 15 m high basalt stack along the eastern shore of the Vatnsnes peninsula
Day 7 - Reykjavik
Last day we relaxed strolling around the capital.