How To Travel The Ring Road In 7 Days

When we decided on Iceland as our honeymoon destination, we got a lot of the same reactions from people, “Iceland?! How did you pick THAT?!” (Identical responses when we decided to move here, but I will save that for another post.) You see, we are not beach people. We met on an outdoor adventure trip! So naturally we are drawn to anything that involves being outside and active. Originally we had our sights set on Scandinavia. Since I have Norwegian ancestry, I have always wanted to visit the beautiful fjörds and see where my great-great-grandparents roamed. While Norway is still very high on my bucket list, when we started looking at pictures of Iceland, I couldn’t believe my eyes. How does one country have so many diverse landscapes?! And the adventure tours they offer are unbelievable! AND you can do a self guided tour at your own pace around the entire country?! Count me in.

Thats right. The Ring Road, or Route 1, is the road the encircles the entire country. Many of the most popular tourist attractions are on or near the road, making it easy to see what you want to see and spend as much time as you would like at each stop. Most of the guided tours of the ring road are 10 days, so I was worried that we wouldn’t be able to fit everything in in the seven days we had available. When we started mapping out the places we wanted to stop, we realized we could do it, but we wouldn’t be able to spend a lot of time at each place.  Thanks to advice on forums such as Trip Advisor and Lonely Planet, we determined we would rather see more of the country than spend more time in each place.

Let me go ahead and break the suspense and tell you that IT. WAS. SO. WORTH. IT.
While there were things we didn’t get to see, we both agreed that the self guided road trip was a great fit for us.
So without further ado…

Day 1

IcelandAir flights land at 6am and since you lose 6 hours of sleep from the time zone change, this calls for a big cup of coffee. I’m talking I need a triple-shot-venti-style if I’m going to get through this day that we have packed full of adventure. When I stopped at the one and only coffee stand in the airport, I said, “I’ll have the biggest coffee you have” and to my dismay, was handed the smallest cup I had ever seen a coffee shop serve. It would maybe compare to a tall at Starbucks. Wondering what this tiny cup could ever do for my jet lag. I quickly realized that Icelanders don’t mess around with watered down humongous coffees, they get right down to business. This tiny cup of awesomeness turned out to be a double strength java that totally changed the way I think about drinking coffee. (I later learned that coffee drinking is a savored activity in Iceland, and most people don’t order their coffee to go, but rather take time to sit down and enjoy their cup of Joe.)

Thankfully the Keflavík International Airport is one of the smallest and fastest airports to get through. A stop at duty free is a must, since alcohol in Iceland is regulated by the government and is very expensive to buy elsewhere. We head to the rental car pick-up which is by far the most popular spot in the whole airport. Wanting to live out the Walter Mitty dream, I hope our car is either “a blue one or a red one” (honestly you would not believe how many little red cars are driving around Iceland! Each time we saw one we said “Walter Mitty dream!”) We ended up with a Kia Ceed, which we became quite fond of.

Day 2

I knew we had a big day of exploring ahead of us, so we woke up early to get some breakfast before we got on the road. Like other things in Iceland, it is not common for places to be open much before 10am. And to get a hot breakfast early in the morning? No chance. Thankfully we drove past this cafe in the harbor that had meat croissants and coffee.  Small coffee, always a small coffee.

We started off with the traditional Golden Circle route. The drive through the GC and Thingvellir is supposed to be beautiful, but unfortunately we had rainy and foggy weather, so we just headed for our first stop: Gullfoss. In Icelandic this translates into “golden falls” and was a stunning sight. It is a massive amount of water and falls into an impressive gorge. Geysir is another popular stop that is along the golden circle, which I didn’t get too excited about. It was neat to see, but I could have lived without it.

Remember when I was saying that driving the country is a good idea and every turn is something different? Well I felt like I hadn’t seen anything yet when we got to the East coast drive. The Eastern ring road travels right along the ocean and weaves in and out of fjords. There were many times when the narrow two lane road seemed pretty small between a gigantic mountain face and the steep cliff into the ocean. This is another time where pictures honestly can’t do it justice.

Just as we are heading home we notice how clear the night sky is and decide to look into the northern lights forecast. When the site said “in the next 24 minutes the aurora will be STORM LEVEL” we immediately got in our car and drove to the middle of nowhere.

You guys. The first time I saw the northern lights I thought my heart was going to burst open. It was the most excited I had ever been in my life. We were all alone in the middle of nowhere, it was pitch dark, and these green lights were just POURING down on us and dancing around the whole sky. I was literally running around in the middle of the road, screaming and doing star jumps. It was the most breathtaking and memorable experience I had ever had. Thankfully Bobby was patient and diligent enough to take some pictures – I couldn’t stop celebrating a lifetime of getting to experience the top of my bucket list!

We had a couple hour drive to Husavik but made a stop at Lake Myvatn along the way. This is where the infamous ice cream picture comes from. We stopped at a gas station and I ordered a chocolate dipped cone and it was the creamiest most delicious ice cream cone I had ever had (that or maybe I was still experiencing euphoria from the night before?!) We drove around Lake Myvatn and also hiked up this inactive volcano dust bowl thing, and honestly I could have left this whole party off the itinerary. (We chose this over Dettifoss which I would recommend instead.) The Myvatn baths are also close, which is a good less touristy alternative to the Blue Lagoon.

When we drove into Husavik I thought I had been transported onto a movie set. This was the most adorable town I had ever seen! On top of that, it was the most beautiful weather day we’d had yet…at one point I was in a tank top! We explored around the harbor, walked through the whale museum, and had enjoyed another Icelandic classic, lamb.

I loved this town with my whole heart. And remember, this is when we decided we could move here 😉

Day 6

We had a whale watching tour scheduled that I was pretty excited for. Unfortunately the whales didn’t cooperate so we only got to see the tail of one whale the whole two hours we were out. Either way, it was a fun experience and I would highly recommend the tour if you are in Husavik.

Back on the ring road, we stop for one more waterfall: Godafoss.  This waterfall is definitely worth a stop, especially since it’s right off the ring road.

Day 7

Today was our longest drive, but per our research, a must see in Iceland. Snaefellsnes is a peninsula in West Iceland that is known for the stunning coastal drive and iconic sights along the way. I really wish we would have had more time to stop at each place, but we did get to see some very beautiful things.

Coastal walk between Hellnar and Arnarstapi

Djupulonsandur