Iceland and where else?

[Anonymous]

Op— one of the awesome things about Iceland with kids (or heck, even, adults) is that it’s a 4-5 hours flight and I think a 4 hour time difference (DST screws me up in remembering). And can easily be done direct from IAD through Icelandair, which is a nice carrier at a reasonable price. Not wasting the first couple of days fighting jet lag with whiny kids is amazing. And yet it feels more “foreign” than a lot of European cities. Plus, 20 hours of daylight. We went in June and did midnight kayaking as the sun set (older teens at that point).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP back, and thanks pps for all these helpful comments! I honestly hadn't considered only visiting Iceland, but I admit I know very little about the country, which I guess is obvious. We have friends who've loved it and I have a kid who is desperate to see volcanoes (loved the story about pp's kid who wound up studying that after their trip). I don't know if we would want such a driving-centered vacation though, but really need to do more research.

I am curious how much you see with, say, 4-5 days in Iceland before going on to Norway or another destination. 10-12 days does not need to include travel, though from experience my kids' stamina tends to flag after about that much travel.

You could do a fair amount, but most of the stuff near Reykjavik is more tailored to the curated experiences. I personally don't like those as much as getting out to see a variety of things. One exception: snowmobiling out on to a glacier and then getting to walk through tunnels down into the glacier is really neat. I'm just going to invest in the gear/training to do glaciers on my own.

We did a museum on volcanoes early in our trip, which shed some light on the different types we were seeing as we traveled around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP back, and thanks pps for all these helpful comments! I honestly hadn't considered only visiting Iceland, but I admit I know very little about the country, which I guess is obvious. We have friends who've loved it and I have a kid who is desperate to see volcanoes (loved the story about pp's kid who wound up studying that after their trip). I don't know if we would want such a driving-centered vacation though, but really need to do more research.

I am curious how much you see with, say, 4-5 days in Iceland before going on to Norway or another destination. 10-12 days does not need to include travel, though from experience my kids' stamina tends to flag after about that much travel.

Here’s an example of what you can cover in 5 days with a rental car.
Day 1- Arrival, explore Reykjavik
Day 2- Golden Circle, stay in Selfoss (or back to Reykjavik if you don’t mind backtracking)
Day 3- South Coast (Seljalandsfoss, Glifrabui, Skogafoss, Kvernufoss, Dyrholaey, Reynisfjar), stay in Vik
Day 4- South Coast (Drive to Fjaðrárgljúfur, Múlagljúfur, Svartifoss, Jokularson, Diamond Beach), stay in Hofn
Day 5- Drive back to airport

An alternative is staying in Reykjavik the whole time and paying for group tours every day, which I personally hate. You’re on someone else’s schedule, you’re always in a group, and you have to drive all the way back to the city each night.

[Anonymous]

can someone suggest where to stay with older teens in Iceland if you have 4 nights in the summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:can someone suggest where to stay with older teens in Iceland if you have 4 nights in the summer.

Renting a car or just booking tours?

[Anonymous]

We are stopping over in Iceland for 4 nights this summer and then flying to Paris for the Olympics. Had a lot of points and gift cards towards the kid's flights. It totally depends on what your family likes. We are split between city people and relaxing/country people so we usually split the vaca accordingly

[Anonymous]

If you do a stopover, you can really just do the capital in Iceland and maybe 2 nights on the Golden circle but with stop and go action. You could do the Golden circle in one day but that drive, park and stay for 15 minutes, look and get back into the car. Depends on what you like to do. To me, it's too long of a flight and drive to just stay at a place for 15 minutes.