In late August I spent eight full days exploring Iceland and I’ve been dying to tell you all about it. Today I’ll share my best photos from the trip. This is a long post… sit back, and prepare to have your mind blown by the expansive beauty of the Land of Fire and Ice.

I flew from Boston to Reykjavik on WOW Airlines for around $350 one-way including all baggage fees — WOW charges for both carry-on bags ($30) and checked bags ($50), but they are upfront about it, and their fares are still usually cheaper than Iceland Air. You can score a better deal if you book farther in advance than I did; my sister paid around $550 round-trip from Boston including baggage fees each way.

Upon arrival, I walk from the airport’s main terminal to the on-site rental car area. Having access to a vehicle is key for seeing this country — I research bus schedules, shared rides, and even hitchhiking (it’s totally acceptable here), but decide that a car is the only reliable way for me to tackle the packed itinerary I’ve planned. If you are traveling slowly, like for a couple of weeks throughout Iceland, it is definitely possible to do it without a rental car. But for shorter trips — get a car.

I used one of these car rental links (they are both for the same company): Reykjavik Rent-a-Car / Iceland Car Rental. I am very pleased with them. I reserved the smallest car, but was given a 4WD vehicle upon arrival — perhaps they were out of the smallest size; I’m not sure. This turns out to be a BIG stroke of luck because you really do need 4WD to see some of the more spectacular places in Iceland. Also, definitely pay extra for the gravel insurance; little dings are unavoidable as even the main road that circles the country isn’t paved for certain stretches.

My first stop is The Blue Lagoon because it’s located between the airport and the capital city Reykjavik. Since my redeye flight lands so early, I figure it will be the perfect time to visit this (literal) tourist hot-spot — so I book my ticket for 8am, right when the place opens. And sure enough, there are only about 10 people in the water when I arrive. And the sun is shining! (Somewhat rare for Iceland; the skies are usually gray.) I am thrilled.

Two hours later, the place is at capacity and they are turning people away at the front desk. So that’s a big tip — get here early to have the Blue Lagoon all to yourself!

Next I drive to the swanky KEX Hostel to check in and eat lunch. My sister compares this place to the Ace Hotel in New York City because of its similar funky design aesthetic. As expected, their rates are high: I pay $50 per night for a basic dorm bed. (I only stay here on the first and last night of my trip, camping the other nights in between — for about $12 per night — to bring down costs.)

Be warned — the salmon and kale dish at KEX is one of the best things I have ever tasted. Full stop.

The cod is also outstanding. I eat three meals at KEX during my brief stay in Reykjavik.

After lunch and a quick nap (I don’t handle redeye flights as well as I used to), I am picked up for a very cool activity…

… the Inside the Volcano tour! This experience is nuts — following a 2km hike across a lava field, we climb up to the entrance of an extinct volcano and strap into this tiny platform.

And then we descend 400 feet into the magma chamber. What awaits below is magical — the inside of the the volcano is a kaleidoscope of colors. I’ve never seen anything like it.

On the hike back across the field, we check out caves created by lava flow.

The next morning in Reykjavik, the sun shines brightly again, so I delay my camping road trip by a few hours to squeeze in sightseeing. It proves to be the right decision — the sun does not make a return appearance on my final day in Reykjavik when I otherwise would have visited all these places.

May I present Hallgrímskirkja, a stunning church whose tower is visible from all over the city. For a few dollars you can climb to the top for views of Reykjavik.

Views from the top:

How charming are these brightly colored houses? Reykjavik, I love you already.

This bold graffiti catches my eye:

By 1pm I depart on the long drive to Akureyri. On the way, I detour to Hraunfossar, my first Icelandic waterfall:

And see its neighbor, Bjarnafossar waterfall:

You can tell by my attire that it is COLD outside! Not the weather I’m used to for late August, but it certainly feels refreshing every time I step out of the car.

I get to Akureyri around 9pm, shortly after sunset. (When my sister visited in early July, the sun never fully set at all — it’s nuts that 6 weeks later makes such a difference.) The wind is strong and there are occasional droplets of rain. It’s my first time putting up a new tent, and between figuring out how to piece it all together and the inclement weather, it takes me nearly TWO HOURS to get everything set up properly. Heck, the whole thing nearly blows away in the wind several times. I start to second-guess my decision to camp for five nights.

Update: this is my giant post about camping in Iceland — planning an itinerary, picking campsites, cooking food, etc.

The next morning I explore the charming city of Akureyri in the daylight and I’m glad I stopped here.

After hunkering down in a coffee shop to upload photos and recharge my electronic devices, I take off shortly after lunch for Lake Mývatn. The views are NUTS. I stop often to photograph the myriad of mountains and waterfalls.

There’s a big waterfall on the way — I pull over to snap photos of Goðafoss:

Icelandic horses are everywhere — I stop a few times throughout the trip to photograph them.

The pseudo craters at Lake Mývatn (Skútustaðagígar area) aren’t even on my radar until I drive by them — and promptly turn around to hike this area.

The campsite at Lake Mývatn is my favorite in the whole country — check out these views! I can set up camp anywhere on that green field:

Tonight (and all my remaining nights camping) everything goes smoothly — whew! Thank God that first night in Akureyri was a fluke. Turns out camping in Iceland is pretty rad, even with the cold temps at night. Rather than bring camping gear with me from the States I used a company called Iceland Camping Rental Equipment. They have an office in Reykjavik with 24-hour pick-up / drop off — you can rent everything you need: tents, sleeping bags, camping pads, cooking gear, stoves, and even a wifi hotspot. This is so much easier than bringing all of my own gear, especially since WOW Airlines charges so much for checked bags, and because after Iceland I will travel onward to Spain and Portugal where I won’t need any camping gear.

I’ve brought my sister’s JetBoil from the States (I picked up fuel in Reykjavik since you can’t take that on airplanes) and use this to cook my dinner most nights. I picked up basic groceries at the affordable Bonus Supermarket in Reykjavik — peanut butter and jelly, a loaf of bread, ramen noodles, pesto sauce, granola, rice milk. This covers almost all of my meals for five days. And then I splurge on really good meals in Reykjavik.

On my sister’s advice, I plan to spend an evening soaking in the Mývatn Nature Baths — it’s on par with the Blue Lagoon, just not nearly as famous (or crowded). Since it gets so cold here at night, I will stay in the water until the baths close at midnight and then take a hot shower before returning to my tent down the road.

Around 11:15pm, not many people remain in the baths. But slowly everyone looks up, and then points towards the night sky — there is a faint trace of the Northern Lights. It’s nothing like the brilliant display that appears often throughout the wintertime here, but I’m so pleased to get a glimpse of it. This is early — usually the lights first appear in mid-September, and tonight is August 29th. After enjoying this view for a few more minutes in the hot water, I hop out to change and grab my camera before the lights disappear.

The next morning I stop briefly at Grjótagjá, which is perhaps better known as the Game of Thrones sex cave. It’s nuts that I don’t watch that show because I’ve been to so many of its shooting locations over the past few years. Can I apply to be a location scout?

I should state that this is the best day of the whole trip, though that’s not saying much because they’re all pretty stellar.

Not far away is the Hverir geothermal area with boiling mud pools and steaming fumaroles — this is an attraction I hadn’t read about while doing my Iceland homework, but thankfully it’s just off the road so you can’t miss it. It reminds me of Yellowstone, or some of the geothermal areas in New Zealand.

And just a few miles from here is Krafla’s Viti Crater — a pretty crater lake:

One of Iceland’s major waterfalls, Dettifoss, is about 30km north from the main road. It’s one of the most powerful waterfalls in all of Europe.

I can’t get over the variety of landscapes in Iceland — the lava field below looks like the surface of the moon. There are giant mountains, craters, glaciers, waterfalls… it’s surreal to watch my view from the windshield change so drastically, and with such frequency.

These next photos were snapped on the drive along Route 94 to Borgarfjörður Eystri, where there is a puffin colony. SO MANY DRAMATIC VIEWS on this road; I have to pull over every couple of minutes and take out my camera.

The village of Borgarfjörður Eystri. Sadly, the puffins have already migrated away by late August. No matter — I am so glad I made this drive.

I head back to the idyllic town of Seyðisfjörður, my favorite town in the whole country. On my sister’s recommendation I walk down to the Skaftfell Center for Visual Art and order the cod. It’s as good as she promised it would be. (This place is also a bar with board games and wood-fired pizzas.)

This is my campsite in Seyðisfjörður — note all the waterfalls trickling down the mountainside in the distance:

This is Seyðisfjörður… see why I’ve fallen in love?

Next I drive down the east coast of Iceland. More dramatic views.

I arrive at Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon in mid-afternoon. It’s as stunning as everyone has promised.

I hop on a zodiac tour with Ice Lagoon Adventure Boat Tours — they take us up close to the glacier and around chunks of ice floating in the bay.

Across the bay there is a black sand beach where glaciers wash up each day as the tide goes out. Unfortunately I’m there as the tide is going back in, so I settle for photographing this tiny chunk of ice that looks like an enormous diamond:

Just beyond Jökulsárlón is another glacier lagoon — this one is called Fjallsárlón. They also have boat tours here but I settle for taking pictures from the shore this time around.

Now officially on the southern coast, I press on towards Skaftafell. The views continue to astound.

I spend the night at Skaftafell (part of Vatnajökull National Park) at the visitor’s center campground. The next morning I hike up to Svartifoss waterfall, which is noted for the basalt columns surrounding it.

Turf houses are iconic in Iceland, and this is the first time I’ve seen one in person — these dwellings are built into the hillside:

Okay, I take it back — this day ties with the Lake Mývatn day as my favorite of the whole trip. I see a tremendous amount of awesome (in its literally meaning) places today.

This is called Kirkjugólf, the “church floor” — but guess what? There has never been a church or dwelling of any kind here. Those are natural basalt stacks (much like the ones at Svartifoss waterfall) that simply look like carefully placed cement flooring. This is a totally natural phenomenon.

AHHH, I’m so excited about this next place — Fjaðrárgljúfur canyon is about 7km off the main route (via a partially gravel road) and it’s unreal. A river zigzags through mossy rock. If I get that Game of Thrones location scout gig, I’m going to recommend this area for an epic battle scene.

There are a number of cool look-out points like this one:

Back on the main road, I detour briefly south to the Dyrhólaey peninsula — there is a scenic black sand beach with rock formations in the distance.

A few miles down the road is a detour for the Sólheimasandur area airplane crash, also on a black sand beach. This one is tricky to find because there’s no signage and you need a 4WD vehicle to maneuver over the gravel road (and I’m being generous by using the word ‘road’). But if you want to see this and don’t have a 4WD car, you can always walk it — it’s around 45 minutes each way. I saw a guy doing this and gave him a lift back to the main road because it was starting to rain.

I swear, the south coast of Iceland is like a record of nature’s greatest hits — it’s just one highlight after another. This is Skógafoss waterfall:

Here’s the deal — there are a lot of waterfalls in Iceland, and after awhile they’re going to start to look the same. But this one (Skógafoss) and the next one (Seljalandsfoss, which I’ll get to in a minute) are my favorites in the whole country — and they’re like 20 minutes apart from each other. So even if you’re waterfall-ed out, don’t skip these.

Will pull over for Icelandic horses!

Okay, this next one is my absolute favorite waterfall because you can walk behind it! Allow me to introduce you to Seljalandsfoss waterfall:

At this point it’s like 8:30pm and the sun is about to set. I press on in darkness towards þingvellir National Park and camp for the night.

In the morning I wake up early to go snorkeling at Sifra — this is an area in the park where the North American and Eurasia tectonic plates meet. The water is deep blue with remarkable clarity — you can see several hundred feet ahead underwater.

That water is also FREEZING and without proper gear one would quickly go into shock. I sign up for Into the Blue snorkeling with Arctic Adventures and they outfit guests with a dry suit. I’ve only worn a wet suit before so this is new to me — everyone wears thin but warm layers and then a suit that feels vacuum-sealed to keep out any water. Let me honest, it’s still absolutely cold in that water, but at least I can stay in there for 20 minutes without getting hypothermia. And when I get out my clothes are totally dry! Very cool.

For lunch I try a restaurant called Friðheimar that my sister recommends — for around $15 or so you can have unlimited homemade bread and fresh tomato soup, made from tomatoes grown in the on-site greenhouse. They serve the soup with sour cream and shredded zucchini, and there are fresh basil plants with scissors on the table to cut your own basil to sprinkle over your dish. This turns out to be a delightful experience.

Next stop: Geysir. Fun fact that probably won’t surprise you: the word ‘geyser’ comes from the name of this place, and there are a handful of them here. It is an underwhelming stop if you’ve already been to Yellowstone in the States — there is one geyser that goes off every couple of minutes but that’s it. I walk around for 30 minutes or so and then leave.

My last waterfall in Iceland is also the country’s biggest — this is Gullfoss. And while I’m sure I’d be more excited about it if I stopped here on Day 1, I can barely muster the energy to get out of the car and snap a photo.

That evening I return to Reykjavik and drop off my rental car. Back at KEX hostel I enjoy the longest, hottest shower I’ve ever taken. Then I order that salmon and kale dish again (this time with an arctic berry beer) and do laundry while a band plays on the main floor. I sleep soundly in a real bed that night.

The next day I have until 7:30pm before I have to leave for the airport. Time to enjoy Reykjavik!

This store is called Fótógrafí (right next to the delicious Cafe Babalú) — it’s got great prints and cheap polaroids too, which make fun decor or gifts for friends back home.

The pedestrian part of Skólavörðustígur street has been painted rainbow colors for Gay Pride:

FYI, here’s how you get to this area — it’s right down the street from Hallgrímskirkja, the very tall church with views that I wrote about at the beginning of this post:

Pro tip: The Laundromat Cafe is worth a visit for the colorful bookcases alone. (Their lattes are also delicious.)

I write postcards over coffee. This is my tradition on any ‘last day’ in a country. I’m a little obsessed with postcards (and coffee, for that matter).

I walk along the waterfront and this place catches my eye — Aurora Reykjavik: The Northern Lights Center. If you are in Iceland over the summer when the days are too long to see the aurora borealis, then this exhibit is worth a stop — in about 30 minutes you’ll learn the science behind the Northern Lights and see beautiful photography and video of this phenomenon throughout Iceland.

Lucky me… on my flight that evening I spot the Northern Lights from my airplane window! The green is not nearly as bright to the naked eye as it looks in this photograph, but it’s still really neat to see it.

And there you have it… all the highlights of my time in Iceland, as told by the best images of the trip. I can’t wait to share more details of each place in greater depth via future blog posts. Thanks for following along!