winter itinerary

This is our winter itinerary for Iceland we’ve completed during the last week of February and the first week of March. It’s a 2-week winter itinerary for Iceland and we hope it may help you set your expectation right for your upcoming Icelandic winter trip.

This article just briefly summarizes our 14-day winter itinerary with beautiful spots and times. We write in detail about each part of our trip in the following articles:

We highly recommend you also read our Guide to Iceland in Winter with many useful tips for visiting Iceland in winter. We also wrote a Full Guide to seeing Northern Lights in Iceland, in case you are interested.

Skógafoss in winter

Contents

Icelandic Winter itinerary
DAY 1 – Arrival
DAY 2 – Southwest part 1
DAY 3 – Southwest part 2
DAY 4 – Weather alert
DAY 5 – South part 1
DAY 6 – South part 2
DAY 7 – Southeast
DAY 8 – East
DAY 9 – Northeast
DAY 10 – North part 1
DAY 11 – North part 2
DAY 12 – Northwest
DAY 13 – Snæfellsnes
DAY 14 – Departure
Videos of Iceland in Winter

Icelandic Winter itinerary

No itinerary is universal and suitable for everyone. We actually believe that exactly the opposite is true. Everyone should create their own itinerary according to their own priorities. That’s why we usually don’t write any specific itineraries and write only about specific places to inspire you for your visit.

Our priorities for this particular winter trip were to:

Spend most of the time outside in nature or around it
See Iceland covered in snow
Hike every day at least a little bit, but not too much and not too hard
Complete the ring road + Snæfellsnes
Try many hot springs and SPAs
Drive ourselves, book tours only for activities we can’t do ourselves

Glacier lagoon picnic stop

We have built our February/March trip around these priorities. What does this mean? We drove quite a lot, because we wanted to see quite a lot. We didn’t spend a lot of time in restaurants, because this was not our priority. We booked simple cabin, hotels or guesthouse accommodations, because fancy hotels were not our priority.

Discounts for the Best Icelandic Car Rentals and Tour Operators for our readers

If you’ve read some of our articles before, you may probably know we try to avoid crowded and touristy places as much as possible. We totally recommend this in summer, when it’s pretty safe. In winter, it’s a bit different. You don’t want to be stuck in a snow storm somewhere alone, trust me. Warm “civilization” is also much more welcome in winter, when you will be much happier coming somewhere for a coffee or a hot dog to warm up.

What I wanted to explain by this is, that we didn’t focus that much to avoid touristy places in winter, because “touristy” places with all the infrastructure are actually much more comfortable and safer to visit in winter. Without any more words, see below what we’ve done.

DAY 1 – Arrival

Gljúfrabúi waterfall in winter

Our flight was supposed to land in Keflavik at round noon. Due to a combination of orange and red weather alerts, however, the flight was postponed by 8 hours. This sounds like a bummer, but we were actually pretty lucky our flight was not cancelled, as were many flights from the US around the same time.

That being said, our flight finally landed at 8PM. We picked our rental car at around 9PM, only thanks to the car rental lot being located right next to the airport hall (saying hi to Go Car Rental, by the way here you can find discount codes on Best icelandic Car rental companies only).

Lóndrangar cliffs in winter

Even a drive to our accommodation in Hveragerði wasn’t easy, nor ordinary. Due to the weather alerts, some of the roads remained closed, including the part of the ring road from Reykjavik to Hveragerði. That meant, we had to drive a longer southern route via Þorlákshöfn, all that already by full dark and still snowing (see short video) quite a lot. Definitely an adventurous and also a little bit scary drive, that took us almost double the expected time. We got to our accommodation at midnight. This is a nice example of a need for being flexible in winter in Iceland.

DAY 2 – Southwest part 1

Seljalandsfoss in winter

Hveragerði accommodation, leaving at 9:20
Reykjadalur hot river, 10:00-13:00
Kerid crater, 13:40-13:50
Hrunalaug hot spring, 14:45-15:30
Seljalandsfoss waterfall, 17:00-17:10
Gljúfrabúi waterfall, 17:15-17:30
Fljótshlið accommodation, arriving at 18:30

Hrunalaug in winter

We write more about each of these spots we consider Best places to visit in Winter in South Iceland here.

DAY 3 – Southwest part 2

Horses at Reynisdrangar beach in Vik in winter

Fljótshlið accommodation, leaving at 9:30
Nauthuságil waterfall, 10:30-11:00
Skógafoss waterfall, 12:15-12:30
Waterfall way attempt, 12:30-13:30
Kvernufoss waterfall, 14:00-14:40
Dyrhólaey, 15:30-15:45
Reynisfjara beach, 16:15-16:30
Reynisdrangar beach, 17:00-17:15
Hella accommodation, arriving at 19:00

An easy hike to Kvernufoss in winter

We write more about each of these places we think are among the Best spots to visit in Winter in South Iceland here.

DAY 4 – Weather alert

This is how you may end up driving in a weather alert. Source: www.ruv.is

The plan for this day was to take an amazing Super Jeep tour to Thórsmörk by Glaciers and Waterfalls. However, weather was against it. This is when we encountered our second weather alert, this time an orange one. This meant very strong winds and lots of rain. The tour obviously got cancelled and we didn’t have to pay anything.

Important: How to choose the best car for Iceland?

Originally, we planned to leave our cabin early in the morning for the tour. Instead, we remained “locked” in the cabin for an almost entire day until 4PM. Our cabin host was kind enough to let us stay in the cabin for that long without any surcharge, despite the checkout time being at 11AM. Take a short look how the orange weather alert looked like:

Nevertheless, we enjoyed the full day in the cabin anyway and didn’t let the weather disappoint us. Imagine being locked up in a nice, warm cabin with wind and rain shaking the cabin and blowing all around you. It definitely has some romantic touch. This is another nice example of a need for being flexible in winter in Iceland.

The only thing we managed during this day was to relax, observe the weather and complete a 3 hour drive to our next accommodation.