If you have plenty of time for Iceland, and I'm talking at least
seven, eight, nine days, there is no experience quite
like driving the Ring Road. The Ring Road is Iceland's
ultimate road trip. It's an 800-mile highway
that goes all the way around the perimeter of the island of Iceland. And if you take the Ring
Road, you're going to see pretty much the best that
Iceland has to offer. It's a total of about 25
or 30 hours of driving when you factor in all of the little side trips and stopovers for views. So divide that by the
number of days you have. You can understand if
it's 30 hours of driving and you have six days, you're
driving five hours a day. So this is a real serious
commitment of time. If you have more time than that, you can slow down a little bit and drive a little bit less
or linger in a few places. Let me tell you a little bit about some of the logistics
of driving the Ring Road in case you're intrigued by this. First of all, it's a
pretty easy road to drive. Almost all of it is paved, there
are a few unpaved stretches but even a two wheel drive car can handle the unpaved stretches if you
go at a reasonable speed. It's just a lot of miles. You're putting on a lot of miles, but the nice thing is the scenery
changes everywhere you go. So as you drive around the
Ring Road, you'll be amazed at the variety of Icelandic
landscapes that you have. Logistically, there's
a couple of ways to go. If you're going to go in the summer, which is the best time to
go because of the long hours of daylight and the roads
are going to be clear, you probably are wise to reserve
accommodations in advance. Which means that about
every five hours of driving you're going to want to spend the night. There's a limited number of
accommodations in Iceland and they fill up quickly
in the summertime. It's a little frustrating sometimes to be tied into having to spend
the night in certain places so some people actually
like to rent a camper. And this is a popular option that lets you be a little bit more flexible and have a little bit more give and take as you go. In Iceland, you can basically camp not just about anywhere,
there are a few restrictions, but they're generally pretty lenient about if there's a rural
parking lot like this, you're welcome to pull
up and spend the night. But check locally to make sure that you're okay before you commit to it. The trick with the Ring
Road is because it involves so much driving it usually ends up being whether you're in a camper
or whether you're in hotels, a lot of one night stays and
that can get a little tedious. So you want to pace yourself and consider partway through maybe
taking a couple of nights to linger and catch your breath. Even if you have to do it quickly, it's really well worth it. I'm going to narrate
the Ring Road itinerary going clockwise around the island. It works either way, you can do it the other way around as well. I like going clockwise
'cause the scenery here at the beginning is a
little less spectacular and by going clockwise it
just sort of gets better and better as you go the
rest of the way around. Notice that the Ring Road
actually passes along the South Coast, which
I've already described. It's also pretty easy to tie the Ring Road into the Golden Circle. So a lot of the things
that I've already described can be sort of spliced into
the Ring Road itinerary. Alright, let's take off. This is going to be a whirlwind trip around Iceland in about seven days. Heading north from Reykjavik,
first you pass through West Iceland which is a
really nice landscape. Not as dramatic as some
other parts of the country, but certainly a nice foretaste
of what you're about to see. There's a beautiful little
town called Borgarnes that has a really interesting museum about the settlement period. Also in West Iceland, there's a lava tube you can tour called Vidgelmir. I mention this one, but there's
a couple of others as well. If you're interested in
volcanoes in Iceland, there's about three place around Iceland where you can actually
go into a volcanic cave. And it's interesting
compared to a limestone cave, which is what we usually see, because limestone caves
are formed over many eons. Volcanic caves are
formed almost overnight. It's something where the
eruption happens and as soon as it cools, you've got
completely new rock formations. And it's also brightly colorful. So I would say you don't have to go to this one in West Iceland, Vidgelmir, but consider splicing a volcanic cave tour somewhere into your
explorations of Iceland. Also in West Iceland, for
example you can stop off at this crater called Grabrok
which has a trail around the top offering spectacular views
over the countryside. This is just bombarding you
with gorgeous views to get you a sense of what you'll see
if you drive the Ring Road. The next stage of the Ring
Road is through North Iceland. And North Iceland actually
to me has some of my favorite little corners of the country. One of the best museums in
Iceland is this place, Glaumbær. This is an open air folk museum where you can see how traditionally Icelanders would live in
sod walled settlements, houses of interconnected sod tunnels connected to different rooms. And you can actually walk
through here and learn about the way traditional
Icelanders would have lived. You can step into the bedroom
where everybody in the house would live together
and learn little facts. For example, in a room like
this the women would often have the bunks closer to the windows because they did the fine
work spinning and knitting and the men would have the
bunks farther from the windows. They didn't need the light quite so much. I love to find these little
off the beaten path museums where you can really learn a
lot about Icelandic culture. That's one of my favorites. From Glaumbær, you could take a shortcut on the main Ring Road
but this is the place where I would take a detour
from the official Ring Road, devote a couple of extra hours to driving the Troll Peninsula. This is a dramatic road
that takes you as far north as you're going to go in Iceland. You're not quite at the Arctic Circle, but from the northernmost
parts of this road you're actually able to
see the Arctic Circle. You're really that close. The other reason I would do
the Troll Peninsula drive is that you get to see this
beautiful town, Siglufjordur. You'll notice a lot of Icelandic
names end with fjordur. That's the Norwegian word fjord, it's just basically an inlet
and usually the inlet has a name and the town that's on
the inlet has the same name. Siglufjordur. There's a number of reasons
why I really enjoy this town. Obviously it has a spectacular setting and it's just a charming town
to explore and spend time in. It also has an excellent
museum, The Herring Era Museum. And you know, I never
thought I would get excited about the herring
industry, but this museum actually achieved that
because it explains how in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this little tiny village
as far north as you can go on Iceland had a thriving herring industry that was so powerful that is
powered the entire Icelandic economy and actually helped
lead to the independence of Iceland because it let
Iceland be economically viable. And you can hike through these buildings and see some of the traditional ships and imagine how way back
when a hundred years ago there were thousands of cans of herring and dozens of docks sticking
out from Siglufjordur, each one with several ships. You can even go into the living quarters of the so-called herring girls. And these were the young women who would come in every
summer to salt and barrel up the herring on assembly lines out front. Again, it's really fun to be
in these middle of nowhere places and find that there's
a really interesting museum. In general, I would say
Icelandic museums are excellent. They do a really good job
of teaching their history, even in small towns like this. As you finish up the drive
around the Troll Peninsula, you come into Iceland's
second city, Akureyri. I'm using the word city charitably. It's a town of about 18,000 people. Just to give you a sense of
the sparsely populated nature of Iceland, the second biggest
city has 18,000 people. It looks and feels like a mini Reykjavik. It even has a church
by that same architect who did the famous church in Reykjavik. There's a little bit of rivalry I think between this city and Reykjavik. But this is a great place just to catch your breath, stock up. It has a nice variety of restaurants. And then from there,
you're going to head east to I think in some ways my
favorite part of Iceland. Unfortunately, it's a six or
seven hour drive from Reykjavik so you only do this if
you're doing the Ring Road. And that is a place called Myvatn. Myvatn is a beautiful lake in
a volcanic part of Iceland. I don't like the lake so
much, it's all of the amazing volcanic landscapes and
the variety of volcanic and geothermal landscapes
that surround the lake. If you remember this diagram of the line that runs through the middle
of Iceland between the North American plate
and the Eurasian plate, we're talking about this
part of that line, Myvatn. And you can imagine that
this has always been a very geothermally and
volcanically active area. At a place called Skutustadir,
you can see pseudocraters. These aren't craters,
they're pseudocraters. They were formed when giant
bubbles of molten rock rose to the surface of
the lake and popped. So they're not a traditional
crater, but a popped bubble. Literally a 10-minute drive away from that place, you come to Dimmuborgir. This is a name that
literally means dark castles. And this is a totally different
kind of volcanic landscape. This was a part that used
to be underneath the water of the lake and liquid magma
leaked up through the lake bed and solidified as it worked
its way up towards the surface. And there are some
beautiful hiking trails here where you can walk around and feel like you're on another planet. Another one of my favorite
attractions in this part of Iceland is the
Myvatn Nature Baths. I mentioned earlier,
you have the Blue Lagoon which is the most famous, but
there are some other premium thermal baths that are
kind of a combination between a touristy-oriented
bath and a local bath. Myvatn is my favorite,
it's about half the price of the Blue Lagoon and
a very similar concept. It's a little bit smaller
but a great place to rest up and get your energy up before you continue on the rest of the Ring Road. Not far from all of these
places, still in the Myvatn area, you'll see factories and geothermal plants hissing away in the countryside. This is one of my
favorite spots to get out and go for a stroll,
it's called Namafjall. And you can get out
here and wander through. It's sort of like Yellowstone
if you've been there. This incredible landscape,
this is called a fumarole. This is a vent for geothermal steam that's being built up under the surface and it just hisses like a teakettle 24/7. Just a pile of rocks. It's really an amazing
place just to walk through. And it's just a two minute
drive off the side of the road. Very easy to get to,
easy to stroll through. Not too far from there, again,
this is all within about a half hour's drive of each
other, is a valley called Krafla where you can actually
go to a visitor's center at one of these geothermal power plants. And there's lots of great hiking opportunities in this area as well. If you want to linger a little bit longer in this north part of Iceland, this is an area that's
about 45 minutes away from the lake that I just talked about, a beautiful little town called Husavik which is known for its whale watching. I mentioned early in Reykjavik,
whale watching is popular and maybe isn't the best
investment of your time and money. It's pretty recent that they did whale watching trips in Reykjavik. Traditionally they would
do them here out of Husavik because it has better access to more exotic species of whales. So if you're going to
be driving the Ring Road and you really want to
do a whale watching trip, I would skip Reykjavik
and do it here in Husavik. Even if you don't do
a whale watching trip, there's a beautiful
little museum in Husavik where they have a great
collection of skeletons of whales that have washed up on
beaches all over Iceland. And then the museum sends
somebody out to scavenge the bones and clean them and assemble them. And you can walk through and
see the bones of actual whales that have washed up around Iceland. Now we're going to continue
east on the Ring Road. We're going to go past
another dramatic waterfall. I said I had three favorite waterfalls, this is the third one, Dettifoss. And there's not much to say about this other than you can
understand why this is just an epic, dramatic,
beautiful place to stop off. It's about a half hour's
drive off the main road, but well worth the detour. Now we're going to head down. We've kind of circled
around the top of the ring. We're going to head
back south and gradually work our way back towards Reykjavik. We're on the East Coast of Iceland, an area called the Eastfjords. Now this is where you've been
on the road for a few days, you're getting tired, I'll
warn you this is sort of the most tedious part of
driving the Ring Road. It takes five or six hours
to go along these fjords. There are no bridges to cut the
corners, you enter the fjord and about a half hour
later you exit the fjord and then you round the bend,
oh and here's another fjord. And you do this about 10 times. And I'm not saying it's not beautiful, I'm saying after six or seven fjords they all do start to look the same. (audience laughing) But it's beautiful. The saving grace, I
think, of the Eastfjords and a place that's
really worth seeking out and spending the night for
sure is called Seydisfjordur. This is a surprisingly
cosmopolitan small town at the far far eastern end of Iceland, one of the most eastern towns of Iceland. This is the place where there's an actual car ferry from Denmark that comes across the Atlantic Ocean and puts in here, the only boat connection
to anywhere from Iceland. So I think that's part of why
it has this cosmopolitan feel. The other reason is there's a
very popular art school here, so students not only from all over Iceland but from other parts of
the world come to this beautiful little town on
the fjord to study art. This is a great town to settle
in for at least a night, maybe two nights, catch a
break from the Ring Road. It has great restaurants, it's got a great microbrew pub, a really neat place. Otherwise, there's not a lot of civilization along the Eastfjords. So we're going to turn the
corner and head towards home. We've just come down from the Eastfjords and now we're going to go
through southeastern Iceland, working our way back towards
the South Coast sights. This is glacier country, this is the home of Iceland's largest glacier, Vatnajokull. It literally means water glacier. It's gigantic, it has as much water by volume as Lake Victoria in Africa. It's as big as the
state of Delaware, okay? This is a gigantic glacier
and as you drive along the southeastern coast of Iceland, you're going to see different
tongues as you go by. Here's another tongue of this glacier, here's another tongue of this
glacier as you coast around. One of my favorite sights
anywhere in Iceland, and I think this is the place
that might take my breath away more than anywhere else
in this amazing place, are the glacier lagoons
here in the southeast. There are a couple of places where tongues of that giant glacier touch down and giant icebergs calve
off the end of the glacier and go floating through the
still waters of a lagoon. It is absolutely majestic
and breathtaking. Now this is a good five hour
drive from downtown Reykjavik so it's not really
suitable for a day trip. But if you're doing the Ring
Road, this is really worth getting out, taking some
pictures, and just enjoying the majesty of the ice half of
the fire and ice of Iceland. That glacier lagoon is
connected to the open Atlantic by a short river and when the
glaciers get small enough, the icebergs from the
glacier get small enough, they get washed down this river and just before they
head out to the open sea they get washed up on a
beautiful black sand beach. It has the nickname Diamond Beach because it looks like so many diamonds that have been tumbled in
the waters of the river on its way down and on their
last stop on their way out towards melting in the Atlantic Ocean, they pause for a moment on this
silky sand of Diamond Beach. Just breathtaking. So I just showed you one
of the glacier lagoons, there's a second one that's
about 10 minutes away. Stop at both of them, this
second one is called Fjallsarlon. This is the one where I would recommend doing a glacier boat trip. This is really worth
investing some time in. You might need to
reserve a few days ahead, but there's a great little company where they suit you up
in a really nice warm outerwear outfit, you hike
down to the glacier lake and you hop in a RIB, a
rigid inflatable boat, and they take you out
onto the glacier lagoon really close to where the glacier tongue comes down and touches the water. At one point, your boat
captain will reach over into the water and he'll haul
up a chunk of 500-year-old ice and give you a chance
to touch and even taste a piece of this ice from the glacier. And this is where you're going to see some of these beautiful blue colors that you'll have come
to expect from glaciers. A lot of the glaciers
you'll see in Iceland are white or even black or gray because they pick up a lot of dirt as they work their way towards
the tongue of the glacier. But when they first
come off of the glacier, an iceberg has this beautiful blue color. After just a few hours,
it's exposed to the air and it starts to melt and it turns white. But if you see a beautiful
blue glacier like this, an iceberg like this, it
just came off the glacier and you can only see this
here in these glacier lagoons. If you're interested in
all of this glacier stuff, you can actually go for a
hike across the glacier. Do not attempt this without
special gear or a guide, it's very dangerous, very slippery. But a guide can outfit you
with crampons on your boots and they'll tie you all together and lead you across the glacier. You can even go for a snowmobiling
trip across the glacier. You can go spelunking through
an ice cave in the glacier. If you're interesting in any
of these glacier activities, I would devote probably a second night to this southeastern Iceland area. Give yourself a full
day, do some research, make some reservations ahead of time. It's really worth doing. So we've almost completed
our Ring Road journey. We've gotten our way from the Eastfjords back down to southeast Iceland. From here on out, it's a re-run. You've already seen
the South Coast, right? We're going to drive backwards
through what we just saw a few minutes ago from the South Coast. Beautiful waterfalls, of course. And work our way back to
home base here in Reykjavik.
