Rebecca Engel
The ring road around Iceland runs about 830 miles, and almost every first trip starts with someone working out whether they can drive the whole thing in five days. The honest answer is no. Seven days is the usual minimum, most people who actually enjoy it take closer to ten, and squeezing it into five turns a holiday into a series of long drives past things you meant to stop for.
So this 5 day Iceland itinerary makes the choice for you. Instead of racing the full loop it takes the southern stretch of it, which is the part with the waterfalls, the black sand beaches, the glacier lagoon and the easiest northern lights viewing in the country. You change hotels exactly once. The rest of this Iceland itinerary is built around not driving past what you came to see.
What This 5 Day Iceland Itinerary Does Differently
The ring road is Route 1, the highway that circles the island, and it’s genuinely one of the great drives. The problem isn’t the road. It’s the maths.
Divide 830 miles by five days and you get about 170 miles of driving a day before you’ve stopped anywhere, and that’s assuming nothing goes wrong with the weather, which in Iceland it regularly does. People who try it end up spending their holiday in a rental car.
This plan uses the southern quarter of that same road instead. Everything below sits on or just off Route 1 between Reykjavik and the glacier lagoon, so you’re still driving the most photographed stretch of the ring road. You’re just not trying to lap the island to say you did.
Two bases carry the whole trip. Reykjavik for the first two nights, which covers the city and the Golden Circle, then Vik for the next two, which puts the south coast and the glacier lagoon in range. Day five drives back. That’s one bag repack in five days.
What you give up is the north and the east: Akureyri, Lake Myvatn, the Westfjords and the whole eastern fjord coastline. They’re worth seeing and they’re the reason to come back for a longer trip. Trying to add them to five days is what breaks this itinerary.
Drive times look short and run long. Reykjavik to Vik is about two and a half hours without stops, Vik out to the glacier lagoon is another two and a half, and every one of those numbers goes up in wind, rain or snow. Build in more time than the map suggests.
Day 1: The Blue Lagoon And Your First Night In Reykjavik
Most flights from North America land at Keflavik early in the morning, which sounds brutal and is actually the best thing about the trip. You get a full first day out of a red eye.
The airport sits on the Reykjanes peninsula, about forty five minutes from the city. What’s convenient is that the country’s most famous hot spring is on the way, roughly twenty minutes from the terminal, so day one doesn’t need you to be functional.
Pick up the rental car at the airport rather than in town. Everything from here runs on having your own wheels.
Morning: The Blue Lagoon, Twenty Minutes From The Airport
The Blue Lagoon is milky blue geothermal water sitting in a black lava field, and it’s the single most photographed thing in Iceland after the northern lights. It’s also warm, which after a night on a plane is worth more than it sounds.
Book a time slot well ahead. It sells out, and arrivals are timed, so turning up hopefully doesn’t work.
One honest note. The lagoon sits near Grindavik, where there’s been volcanic activity for the past couple of years, and it closes briefly when authorities want to assess a new eruption. It has reopened every time, usually within hours or days, but check the status before you drive out.
If it’s shut, or if you’d rather not build day one on one venue, Sky Lagoon is the alternative and it’s arguably the nicer soak. It sits on the coast just outside Reykjavik with an infinity edge looking out at the Atlantic, so it’s closer to your hotel and not on the Reykjanes peninsula at all.
Afternoon: An Easy First Evening In Reykjavik
Reykjavik is small enough to walk end to end, and the whole centre is basically one long street with things branching off it. After a flight, that’s exactly the right amount of city.
Hallgrimskirkja is the concrete church on the hill that you can see from most of town. The tower has a lift and the view from the top is the clearest way to understand how the city is laid out, with the coloured roofs running down to the harbour.
From there it’s downhill to Laugavegur for food and shops, and then out to the water for the Sun Voyager, a steel sculpture on the seafront that looks like a ship’s skeleton. Harpa, the glass concert hall, sits a few minutes further along the harbour and lights up after dark.
Don’t overplan the evening. You’ve been awake since a red eye and tomorrow is a driving day.
Day 2: The Golden Circle
The Golden Circle is a loop of three big sights east of Reykjavik that you can do comfortably in a day and be back in the city for dinner. It’s the most popular day trip in the country for a reason: the three stops are genuinely different from each other and none of them needs a hike.
The whole loop runs about 150 miles round trip from Reykjavik. Leave early if you want the sights before the tour buses, which tend to arrive mid morning and move in a pack.
You sleep in Reykjavik again tonight, so there’s no packing involved.
Thingvellir, Where The Plates Pull Apart
Thingvellir is a rift valley where the North American and Eurasian plates are slowly separating, and you can walk down the middle of it on a paved path between two rock walls. It’s one of the few places on earth where the gap between two continental plates is this visible from the ground.
It’s also where Iceland’s parliament first met, back in 930, which makes it about as old as functioning parliaments get. The site was chosen partly because the cliff face throws voices back at a crowd.
Allow an hour or so. Parking costs a small fee that you pay at a machine or online, and the main path from the upper car park down through the rift is the bit worth doing.
Geysir, And The One That Still Erupts
The word geyser comes from this place, which is a nice bit of trivia and slightly misleading, because the original Geysir barely erupts any more.
The one everybody actually watches is Strokkur, a few steps away, and it goes off every five to ten minutes without fail. You’ll see the water dome up into a blue bubble a second before it fires, which is the moment people stand around waiting for.
Stay behind the ropes and stand upwind. The water comes out of the ground far hotter than anything you want landing on you, and the whole field is dotted with smaller pools that are just as hot without the warning of a plume.
Gullfoss, The Waterfall At The End Of The Loop
Gullfoss drops in two stages into a canyon, and the second drop is at an angle to the first, so from the upper viewing platform the river appears to vanish into the ground.
There’s a path down to a closer viewpoint that puts you near enough to get soaked in spray. It’s often icy in the colder months and closes when it isn’t safe, so check the signs at the top rather than the guidebook.
The upper platform and the car park cafe are open year round, and the view from up there is the one most people picture anyway.
Kerid Crater Or A Hot Spring On The Way Back
The loop back toward Reykjavik passes two things worth a stop, and you’ve got time for one of them.
Kerid is a volcanic crater with a lake at the bottom and walls that are properly red, which is unusual in a country this monochrome. A path runs around the rim and another goes down to the water, and the whole thing takes about half an hour.
The other option is the Secret Lagoon at Fludir, which is the oldest swimming pool in Iceland and has been there since 1891. It’s a simple hot pool in a field with steam drifting off it, and it feels a lot more like the local version of a soak than the Blue Lagoon does.
Either way you’re back in Reykjavik in the evening. Pack tonight, because tomorrow you move.
Day 3: Waterfalls And Black Sand On The South Coast
Today is the drive that makes the whole plan work. Reykjavik to Vik is about two and a half hours straight through, and you’re going to take most of the day over it, because the best run of waterfalls in the country sits along the way.
Everything below is on Route 1 or a few minutes off it. You won’t need to backtrack once.
Check the road and weather forecast before you leave. The south coast is exposed and wind is the thing that changes plans here, not rain.
Seljalandsfoss, The One You Walk Behind
Seljalandsfoss falls about 200 feet off what used to be a sea cliff, and a path runs all the way around the back of it. Standing behind a waterfall looking out through it is the sort of thing that sounds better than it is right up until you do it.
You will get wet. Not damp, wet, so put the waterproof on before you walk over rather than after.
The path ices over in winter and closes when it’s dangerous. Even then the front view from the car park is worth the stop.
A few minutes’ walk north along the cliff is Gljufrabui, which is hidden inside a narrow slot in the rock. You wade a shallow stream to get in and it’s the better photograph of the two, mostly because half the people at the main falls never notice it’s there.
Skogafoss And The Stairs Beside It
Skogafoss is about half an hour further east and it’s a completely different shape: one wide curtain of water dropping straight down onto a flat plain, with no cliff wrapping around it.
You can walk right up to the base, and on a bright day the spray throws a rainbow across the front of it. Standing there is loud in a way photos never manage to show.
A long staircase climbs the hill beside the falls to a platform at the top, which looks down the length of the water and out over the coast. It’s a real climb but a short one, and the hiking trail that carries on from the top is the start of a much longer route you’re not doing today.
Reynisfjara And The Waves You Have To Respect
Reynisfjara is the black sand beach just before Vik, with a wall of hexagonal basalt columns at one end and the Reynisdrangar sea stacks standing offshore. It looks like nowhere else on the itinerary.
It’s also the one genuinely dangerous stop on this list, and that isn’t a figure of speech. The beach gets sneaker waves, which arrive without warning and run much further up the sand than the ones before them, and people have been killed here. There’s a warning light system at the entrance now for exactly that reason.
The rule is simple: never turn your back on the water, and never let anyone stand at the edge for a photo. Watch the sea for a few minutes before you walk down and you’ll see how far the range varies.
Just up the road, Dyrholaey is a promontory with an arch through it and a view back along the whole black coastline. Part of it closes during puffin nesting season in early summer, so check before you drive up.
Settling Into Vik For Two Nights
Vik is a village of a few hundred people with a red roofed church on the hill above it, and it’s the last real cluster of services for a long stretch east. That’s precisely why it’s the second base.
Staying here rather than driving back to Reykjavik is what buys you tomorrow. From Vik the glacier lagoon is a manageable day out. From Reykjavik it isn’t.
There’s not a lot to do in the village itself, and that’s fine. Eat, sleep, and if the sky is clear step outside and look up, because you’re a long way from any city lights now.
Day 4: The Glacier Lagoon And Diamond Beach
This is the longest driving day of the trip and the one people remember. Vik out to Jokulsarlon is about two and a half hours each way, so treat it as a proper day out rather than an errand.
Leave early. The light is better, the coach tours haven’t arrived, and you want slack in the schedule for the stops on the way.
The drive itself is half the point. Route 1 runs across Skeidararsandur, a vast flat plain of black glacial sand with the ice cap sitting up on the right, and there’s very little on it but road.
Skaftafell And Svartifoss On The Way East
Skaftafell is part of Vatnajokull National Park and it’s the natural stop about two thirds of the way to the lagoon. There’s a visitor centre, real bathrooms and a car park, which after that drive across the sand you’ll appreciate.
The walk up to Svartifoss takes around forty five minutes each way and climbs steadily. The waterfall drops over a wall of dark hexagonal basalt columns that hang down like organ pipes, and it’s the most striking small waterfall in the country.
If the legs aren’t up for it, the path toward Skaftafellsjokull gives you a close look at a glacier tongue on much flatter ground.
Jokulsarlon, The Glacier Lagoon
Jokulsarlon is a lagoon full of icebergs that have broken off the glacier at the far end and are slowly drifting out toward the sea. Some are white, some are that impossible blue, and some are streaked black with old volcanic ash.
It’s the deepest lake in Iceland, and it didn’t exist a century ago. The glacier has retreated far enough to leave the basin behind, which is a sobering thing to be told while you’re admiring the result.
Boat trips run out among the icebergs in the warmer months. They’re worth doing if the timing works, but the walk along the shore and the bridge over the outlet channel are free and give you most of it.
Seals live in the lagoon and hang around the mouth where the current runs. They’re easy to miss until someone points one out.
Diamond Beach, Straight Across The Road
The icebergs that make it out of the lagoon get pushed back onto the black sand on the seaward side of the bridge, and that’s Diamond Beach. Chunks of clear ice sitting on black sand, lit from behind when the sun is low.
It’s a two minute drive or a short walk from the lagoon car park, and it changes completely from one day to the next depending on what has washed up.
Same water rule as Reynisfjara applies here. The waves are strong, the ice is slippery, and standing on a block that’s still in reach of the sea is how people get hurt.
Head back to Vik in the late afternoon. You’ll be tired, and that’s the correct end to this day.
Day 5: The Drive Back And What You Skipped On The Way Out
Day five runs back west along the same road, which sounds like a waste and isn’t. You drove out fast on day three to reach Vik with daylight left, so there are stops you went past, and the coast looks completely different heading the other way.
How much you fit in depends on your flight. Work backwards from it and be generous, because the drive from Vik to Keflavik is around three hours before you stop for anything.
The Solheimasandur Plane Wreck
A US Navy DC-3 came down on the black sand at Solheimasandur in 1973. Everyone on board walked away, and the fuselage is still sitting out there stripped to a shell.
The catch is the walk. You can’t drive to it any more, so it’s about two and a half miles each way across flat black sand with nothing to look at, which takes most people forty five minutes in each direction. A shuttle bus runs from the car park if you’d rather not.
It’s worth it in the right weather and thoroughly not worth it in the wrong weather. There’s no shelter anywhere on that plain.
If the walk doesn’t appeal, the drive back has plenty else. The moss covered lava fields near Hveragerdi, the greenhouses that grow tomatoes on geothermal heat, and a last look at Seljalandsfoss from the road are all easier wins.
Fill the tank before Keflavik and leave more time than you think for the rental return. Then that’s five days in Iceland done, without a single day spent driving somewhere just to say you’d been.
Where To Stay On A 5 Day Iceland Itinerary
Two bases, two nights each, and one drive home. That’s the whole accommodation plan and it’s most of why this 5 day Iceland itinerary works.
Nights one and two go in Reykjavik. Staying central means you can walk to dinner on the evening you land, and the Golden Circle loop starts and finishes at your door.
Nights three and four go in or near Vik. The village itself has the most options, but the guesthouses scattered along the road either side of it are often better value and put you closer to the morning drive east. Book these early, because there genuinely aren’t many rooms out there and they fill up.
Night five doesn’t exist on this plan, since most flights back leave in the afternoon or evening. If yours goes at an awful hour, a night near Keflavik rather than in Reykjavik saves you an early morning drive.
One thing worth knowing: accommodation in Iceland is expensive by most standards and guesthouses with shared bathrooms are completely normal, including good ones. Don’t read a shared bathroom as a warning sign the way you might elsewhere.
What To Know Before You Drive In Iceland
None of this route needs a four wheel drive. The F roads that do are highland tracks, they’re shut for much of the year, and nothing on this itinerary goes anywhere near one. A small two wheel drive car handles the whole thing in summer, and something a bit heavier is reassuring in winter.
The wind is the thing nobody warns you about properly. It can rip a car door out of your hand and bend it back on its hinges, and most standard insurance policies specifically exclude door damage, which tells you how often it happens. Hold the door with both hands and open it facing away from the gusts.
Route 1 narrows to one lane bridges in places along the south coast. Whoever gets there first goes first, and you’ll see the sign well before the bridge.
Check road.is for conditions and vedur.is for the forecast every single morning. In winter roads close, and they close quickly. Icelanders treat those two sites as part of getting dressed and visitors tend to treat them as optional, which is the wrong way round.
Speed cameras are common, fines are steep, and driving off marked roads onto moss or sand is illegal and carries a serious penalty. The moss takes decades to grow back, which is why they care so much.
When To Go, And What About The Northern Lights
This route works in any season, but it’s a genuinely different trip depending on when you go.
September through March gives you the northern lights, which need dark skies and some luck with cloud cover. Vik is the best night of the five for it, since there’s almost no light pollution out there. Nothing is guaranteed and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something, but two dark nights on the south coast is a reasonable roll of the dice.
The trade is daylight. Midwinter gives you only four or five usable hours, which is tight for the day four drive, and snow can close roads with little notice. December and January are for people who want the lights badly enough to plan around short days.
May through August flips it. You get endless light, every road and path open, puffins at Dyrholaey, and boat trips running on the lagoon. You also get the crowds and the highest prices of the year, and no aurora at all, because it never gets dark enough.
If you want one recommendation, take late September or early October. The roads are still easy, the days are still long enough, the summer coaches have thinned out, and the lights have started.
If You Have A Sixth Day, Go To Snaefellsnes
If your dates stretch to six, don’t spend the extra day pushing further east. Spend it on the Snaefellsnes peninsula instead, northwest of Reykjavik and about two hours from the city.
People call it Iceland in miniature, and for once the nickname is fair. There’s a glacier at the end of it, black beaches, lava fields, fishing villages, sea cliffs and Kirkjufell, the pointed mountain with the little waterfall in front of it that turns up on more Iceland covers than anywhere else.
It works as a long day loop from Reykjavik or as an overnight in Grundarfjordur or Stykkisholmur. Slot it in after day two, while you’re still based in the city, rather than tacking it on the end when you’re tired.
It’s also the strongest argument for this whole approach. A sixth day spent properly on one peninsula beats a sixth day spent covering another 300 miles of ring road.
Final Thoughts
Five days isn’t enough for the ring road and it’s plenty for a very good trip, as long as you stop treating the loop as the goal.
Built this way you get a city, the Golden Circle, the best run of waterfalls in the country, a black sand beach, a glacier lagoon and two dark nights with a decent shot at the northern lights. You unpack twice and you’re never more than a couple of hours from where you slept.
The parts you skipped will still be there. Plenty of people come back for the north and the east once they’ve seen what the south looks like, and that’s a much better problem than spending five days watching Iceland go past a windscreen.
Book the lagoon slot and the Vik rooms as soon as your dates are set. Everything else on this Iceland itinerary can be decided the morning of.
