This post is about more amazing day trips from Reykjavik. You could probably spend 3 weeks or more taking day trips from this beautiful city because there is so much to see. But we only had a few days so I'll tell ya where we went!
First up, Snaefellsnes Penninsula. We drove west from Reykjavik about 2 hours and stopped at a small town along the way called Borgarnes. We visited the Settlement Centre which was a small museum and a quick stop over looking a beautiful mountain. This little town had the coolest turf houses, Townsend stopped on the side of the road so I could take pictures :) All of the other photos I took through the window while we were driving. If we had stopped for every photo op, we would have never made it to Snaefellsnes!
After driving through these beautiful landscapes we stopped for lunch at RuBen. This little hole in the wall was one of the few restaurants around but it turned out to be an excellent lunch. We had an amaze fish stew with this incredible homemade bread and lamb tenderloin. The restaurant had a great kids play area for Leon with books and toys so he was entertained too!
We finally approached Kirkjufellsfoss, the waterfall that I had been dreaming of photographing since before I even started planning this trip! When we drove up, it looked sort of underwhelming. Everyone was saying, "we drove all this way for that?" but as we walked up the waterfall got bigger and bigger and we really enjoyed exploring around. It is not as grand as some of the other waterfalls you will see but when you see it with that mountain in the background it is really breathtaking and well worth the drive.
We continued our journey around Snaefellsnes Penninsula and the views got better and better. Plan for this to be a long drive because you will be pulling over for photos every 10 minutes!
The next day we drove The Golden Circle. This is kind of a "must see" for people but I would say, if you only have a day or two for day trips from Reykjavik, skip it. Gullfoss is a big waterfall and the story behind it makes it even more amazing, but personally, I liked the smaller waterfalls that you could walk around and explore more. See my post on The South of Iceland here for another easy day trip from Iceland and lots of waterfalls that I think were way more fun than Gulfoss.
With that said, Gullfoss is an impressive waterfall and the largest glacial waterfall in Europe. Because it is glacier water, it is a vibrant blue color and extremely cold! The day we went it was about 60 degrees but when we walked up to the waterfall it was at least 30 degrees colder! It was freezing! But its really amazing this waterfall is still accessible to the public. In the early 1900's, there were plans for the owner of the land to sell the property to an energy company that wanted to use the power and force of the waterfall to generate energy. But the daughter of the landowner adamantly refused to sell the land and even threatened to throw herself down the waterfall if it was sold to the energy company. Thankfully the deal never went through and it is now protected by the Icelandic government.
We also had a lovely little lunch at a gorgeous spot and the dessert was something to remember, a warm waffle with homemade strawberry ice cream, I die.
Our last day trip from Reykjavik was our drive to Akureyri. Its about a 4 hour drive so you definitely need to spend the night there for at least a night or two to make the drive worth it. But drove through the Westfjords and saw drastic weather changes from very thick fog to clear blue skies. Once we arrived in Akureyri, there were a whole slew of new day trips so stay tuned for the next post!
