How to Visit Iceland: 8 Essential Lessons
Iceland is one of those places where you can look out the window and wonder how it is real.
Waterfalls beside the highway, Iceland, and black-sand beaches greet travelers. Mountains rise in every direction, and roads seem to become part of the attraction.
We spent nine days road-tripping around Iceland in a campervan, and while we’d do it again in a heartbeat, there are definitely a few things we wish we’d understood before going.
Because the Iceland you see on Instagram absolutely exists.
But so do packed parking lots, expensive campsites, ridiculously long driving days, sideways rain and those moments when your relaxing campervan vacation starts feeling suspiciously like a full-time job.
So if you’re planning an Iceland road trip, here are eight things we genuinely wish we’d known before visiting.
1. Iceland Is Expensive — But the Little Things Add Up the Fastest
We knew Iceland was expensive before we went.
What we underestimated was how quickly all the smaller expenses would start stacking up.
Our campervan cost approximately $4,200 CAD for nine days, including bedding, kitchen equipment and full insurance coverage.
Then there were campsites. We generally paid around $50–$60 CAD per night, although some could get closer to $100.
Add fuel, groceries, parking, attractions and the occasional meal out, and suddenly your daily budget starts disappearing pretty quickly.
One of the biggest ways we saved money was buying groceries and cooking most of our meals in the campervan.
And honestly? Some of those campervan dinners became part of the experience.
Our biggest advice isn’t necessarily to make Iceland as cheap as possible. It’s to decide before you go what you actually want to spend money on.
Maybe that’s a geothermal spa. Maybe it’s a tour you can’t do independently. Maybe you want one really good restaurant meal.
Spend there, and save on the things you don’t care as much about.
Because thankfully, a lot of what makes Iceland incredible doesn’t come with an admission price.
2. Yes, Iceland Really Can Be That Crowded
This one caught us off guard.
We’d visited Iceland years ago, and the country we remembered felt very different from what we experienced this time.
At some of Iceland’s biggest attractions particularly along the Golden Circle and South Coast — you’re probably not getting that cinematic moment where it’s just you, a waterfall and absolutely nobody else around.
There might be 75 people just outside your camera frame.
And a tour bus pulling in behind them.
That doesn’t mean places like Skógafoss, Reynisfjara or Þingvellir aren’t worth seeing. They’re popular for a reason, and we’d still recommend experiencing them.
Just go in with realistic expectations.
The biggest difference for us came as we traveled farther from some of the busiest tourist routes.
Suddenly, there were fewer buses, fewer crowds and a lot more of those how do we have this place almost to ourselves? moments.
3. Some of Our Favorite Stops Weren’t on Our Itinerary
We had all the famous Iceland stops saved.
Skógafoss. Reynisfjara. Þingvellir. Skaftafell. Stuðlagil. Dettifoss. Lake Mývatn.
And we’re glad we saw them.
But some of the moments we still talk about weren’t things we’d spent months researching.
They were the random waterfall we spotted.
The road we decided to take.
The place that looked interesting enough from the campervan that we decided to pull over.
One waterfall ended with us getting completely soaked, and naturally that became one of the stories we’re probably going to remember forever.
That’s one of the biggest things Iceland taught us:
Don’t plan away your ability to be spontaneous.
Have your must-sees, but leave enough room to stop when Iceland inevitably puts something ridiculous outside your window.
4. Google Maps Is Lying to You… Kind Of
Okay, technically it’s not.
If Google Maps says somewhere is three hours away, the actual drive might take three hours.
You are not going to take three hours.
You’re going to see a waterfall.
Then horses.
Then a viewpoint.
Then something steaming in the distance.
Then one of you is going to yell, “WAIT! TURN AROUND!”
And suddenly the drive you thought would take three hours has eaten most of your day.
We also need to acknowledge something about the way we travel:
We are not 6 a.m. vacation people.
There were days we didn’t leave our campsite until around 11:30 a.m.
Could we have squeezed considerably more into nine days if we’d woken up at sunrise every morning?
Absolutely.
Would we have enjoyed ourselves as much?
Probably not.
Build your itinerary around how you actually travel, not around someone’s perfectly optimized Ring Road itinerary that requires waking up at 5:30 every morning.
5. A Campervan Road Trip Is an Adventure — Not Necessarily a Relaxing Vacation
Before the trip, campervan life sounds very romantic.
Wake up surrounded by Icelandic scenery. Make breakfast. Drive somewhere beautiful. Chase waterfalls. Cook dinner. Find a campsite.
And sometimes it really does feel exactly like that.
But you’re also constantly doing something.
Where are we sleeping tonight?
How far do we need to drive?
Do we need groceries?
What’s the weather doing?
Where’s the next gas station?
Did we pack everything away before driving?
What are we eating?
How late can we arrive at the campsite?
Then you wake up and do it all again.
By the end of some days, we were exhausted.
That’s not a complaint. It’s actually part of why we loved the trip.
But if your definition of vacation is sleeping in, sitting beside a pool and making zero decisions for seven days, a Ring Road campervan trip probably isn’t going to feel particularly relaxing.
Iceland was a vacation. But it was very much an adventure vacation.
6. Icelandic Weather Really Is That Unpredictable
Everyone tells you this before you go.
Then you arrive and realize they weren’t exaggerating.
The weather can change incredibly quickly. Sunshine turns into rain. Rain turns into wind. And Icelandic wind can make the exact same temperature feel like an entirely different day.
Which means one of the worst things you can do is build an itinerary with absolutely no flexibility.
If weather makes something unsafe or miserable one day, you want enough breathing room to change your plans rather than feeling like your entire trip has fallen apart.
And yes:
Bring waterproof clothing.
That’s not just something travel creators tell you because they have a rain jacket linked in their Amazon storefront.
You will probably use it.
7. You Don’t Have to Love Every Famous Iceland Attraction
This might be slightly controversial, but we think it’s important.
Just because everyone says something is a “must-do” doesn’t mean it has to be a must-do for you.
There were famous Iceland experiences we enjoyed but probably wouldn’t prioritize again.
Meanwhile, there were smaller stops we’d happily return to tomorrow.
Before spending hundreds of dollars trying to complete somebody else’s Iceland bucket list, ask yourself whether you actually want to do those things.
Not a spa person?
You don’t need to visit a famous geothermal spa simply because everyone else’s itinerary includes it.
Would you rather spend the day chasing waterfalls?
Put that money toward your campervan and fuel instead.
There are already more incredible things to see in Iceland than you’re going to fit into one trip.
You might as well choose the ones you actually care about.
8. Leave Room to Wander
If we could change one thing about how people plan Iceland, it would be this:
Stop trying to plan every minute.
Know your must-sees.
Understand how far you need to drive.
Have a general idea of where you’re sleeping.
Know which experiences require reservations.
And then leave some blank space.
Because the thing you remember most from Iceland might not be the attraction you saved six months before your trip.
It might be the waterfall you didn’t know existed.
The ridiculous weather you got caught in.
The view that made you pull over.
Cooking dinner in your campervan after an impossibly long day.
Or the moment one of you looks out the window and says:
“Wait… what’s over there?”
Go see what’s over there.
So, Is an Iceland Road Trip Worth It?
For us, absolutely.
But we’d go knowing that Iceland isn’t necessarily the empty, effortless road trip social media can sometimes make it look like.
It’s expensive.
The popular places can be crowded.
You’ll probably drive much more than you expect.
The weather might completely destroy the itinerary you spent months creating.
And after nine days of moving almost constantly, there’s a decent chance you’ll come home needing a vacation from your vacation.
But then there are the other moments.
Standing underneath a waterfall.
Driving through landscapes that don’t seem real.
Pulling over because the view is too good to keep driving.
Looking at each other for probably the twentieth time that day and asking:
“How is this a real place?”
That’s the Iceland we’ll remember.
And we’d go back in a heartbeat.
We’d just leave even more room to wander next time.
Planning an Iceland Campervan Road Trip?
We’re sharing more from our nine-day Iceland campervan trip, including our route, what our campervan actually cost, where we camped, what we spent, what we’d do differently and the places we’d absolutely go back to.
Because if there’s one thing we learned from driving around Iceland, it’s that you don’t need to see everything to have an incredible trip.
You just need enough of a plan to get started and enough freedom to see where the road takes you.
Because we believe we’re all made to wander and Iceland might be one of the best places in the world to do exactly that.
