On our visit to Iceland, we chose Reykjavik as a base of stay and decided to rent a car and radiate from the capitol city to see the region around it via a series of day trips.

No one in our group wanted to leave too early each day or return too late, so if your group doesn’t mind longer days of driving, you may be able to venture farther afield than we did on each of these jaunts. Otherwise, each of these trips assumes you eat breakfast in your hotel or rental apartment and then return to Reykjavik for dinner.

You can use your preferred phone application for map to navigate to any of these locations; typing in their names will pull up the destination and the driving directions to it. (We used Apple Maps.) However, no one ever goes wrong by having a physical map as well.

Side note: For your days (and evenings) in Reykjavik, whether you choose to visit the city while in Iceland or stay there as a base of stay for venturing into the country like we did, I wrote up a post with our recommendations for what to see, do, and eat in Reykjavik.

Northeast of Reykjavik

Our agenda for this day’s trip:

• Thingvellir National Park

• Geysir Geothermal Area

• Lunch at Farmers Bistro

• Gullfoss Waterfall

• Kerið Crater

We started the day by heading to Thingvellir National Park. Thingvellir has a visitors center featuring a platform walk that gives visitors a taste of the landscape and an overview of the extensive parklands, which have served many functions in Icelandic history, many of them governmental, legal, and judicial. The ceremony to mark Iceland’s independence in 1944 even took place there.

Next we drove to the Geysir geothermal area, a surreal landscape with steaming holes in the ground, hot water flowing from smaller holes and crevasses, water bubbling in cauldron-like craters, and an active geyser that we were fortunate enough to be in place to see erupt.

Then we drove a short distance to a late lunch at Farmers Bistro, the restaurant of an actual farm with greenhouses and a mushroom-growing operation—the only one in the country. The restaurant cooks food using many of the farm’s products, including an entire buffet of mushroom dishes and a dessert of mushroom ice cream. Everyone who tried the mushroom ice cream loved it, so don’t skip it if you go.

After lunch, we went to see the Gullfoss waterfall, which was utterly immense and spectacular. The video I capture does it far more justice than my words every could:

As our final stop of the day before returning to Reykjavik, we drove to the large crater at Kerið. The crater is notable to me for its size, sure, but also for the color of the water at its base and the brick-red tint of the gravel we walked along its rim to see down into it.

Southeast of Reykjavik

Our agenda for seeing the area southeast of Reykjavik made for a slightly longer day:

• Skógafoss Waterfall

• Skógar Museum

• Lunch at The Black Beach Restaurant

• Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach

• Vík í Mýrdal

• Reynisdrangar

• Dyrhólaey nature reserve

We still didn’t need to leave our rental apartment too early—we headed out around 9 a.m.—but the overall driving distance and the planned stops meant we couldn’t linger too long in the morning before we got on the road and we didn’t stay long in any particular stop.

After leaving base, we headed directly to the Skógafoss waterfall, which was about an 1.5 hour drive from Reykjavik. It was impressive—definitely not something to miss—and the site has a staircase allowing access to the top to see the waterfall from another perspective. I’ll confess, though, that the waterfall we had seen just the day before, Gullfoss, was so much more impressive that I almost didn’t appreciate Skógafoss as much as I should have.

We then drove the short distance from the waterfall to the Skógar Museum. The museum has an open-air component with traditional historic houses from the region, which I always love; a building with a variety of technological advancements and mechanical tools; and a building with arts and crafts from the region, including a wonderfully creepy bottom floor with bizarre taxidermy and animal skeletons—and pictures of Icelandic wrestling champions. I loved it.

After the museum, we had lunch at The Black Beach Restaurant, which is situated directly on the Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach, which we walked on a bit after eating, looking at the Reynisdrangar cliffs. (A note of caution: The waves are unpredictable here. Heed the posted warnings carefully—they’re not exaggerations. You can easily get soaked or worse if you get too close to the shoreline.)

We then drove through the minuscule town of Vík í Mýrdal before making a final stop at the Dyrhólaey nature reserve, which offered a great view of the black sand beaches cliffs, and ocean.

The Reykjanes Peninsula Southwest of Reykjavik

Our agenda for this day trip:

• Explore the area south of Reykjanes by car

• Blue Lagoon

We left Reykjavik for this day trip around midmorning, as seeing what we planned to see didn’t require as much driving as the other days we had mapped.

Based on what I had read in our guidebook, I worried that we wouldn’t find much to see. Unfortunately, I was correct. Though the landscape is unquestionably different in this region, especially because the area has an active volcano and the lava fields are fresh, immense, and amazing, you won’t need to book much time to see it.

We had reservations for a soak and lunch at The Blue Lagoon that afternoon, an attraction in the area. You can read more about our experience there and my recommendations around it in my post on Reykjavik. The hot springs are close enough for anyone staying in the city to get there easily even without a car. (The spa offers transportation.)

Iceland Makes Road Trips a Pleasure

Iceland’s roads and the attractions along them are extremely well maintained and marked. You shouldn’t have a single qualm about renting a car and setting out for day trips or even longer road trips while visiting the country. (A popular tourist option is to rent a camper and travel for days on the road, in fact.)

Tourists have flocked to Iceland in recent years to marvel at the country’s natural beauty and to enjoy its thermal baths and warm and welcoming culture. I genuinely didn’t know what to expect, as I’m not much of a cold-weather person, but I am so glad I went. You will be, too.