Icelandic Weekend Getaway With Kids: Logistics and Itinerary

The inspiration for We Go With Kids came last summer, as Catherine and I were busy sharing notes following our respective vacations to Iceland and South Africa. For years, I’ve been intrigued about traveling to Iceland, which numerous friends and family have recommended as an ideal honeymoon or baby moon location from the East Coast. My husband and I never quite made it to Iceland, however, largely due to lack of time and availability of fight options. In 2012, Wow Air, an Icelandic low cost air carrier, began offering incredibly affordable direct flights from Baltimore International Airport to Keflavik. As a serious miles and points junkie, however, I never seriously considered flying Wow Air until after reading about Catherine’s experience. Prior to reading about Catherine’s experiences, I truly did not consider Iceland with kids to be a viable option.

On a whim, last November, I happened to check for flights to/from Baltimore to Keflavik and found round trip flights over Memorial Day weekend for $225/person. Within a matter of hours, I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to jet off for a long weekend with my oldest son, who would be just two weeks shy of his ninth birthday on our trip.

Booking Flights:

In November 2017, I booked two round trip tickets on Wow Air from Baltimore to Keflavik for $567.06. The total includes the $99.98 fee for checking a bag to/from, but otherwise, I did not pay for any other up charges or services, including advance seat selections or carry on baggage. The flight was scheduled to depart on Thursday night, arriving at Keflavik at 5am on Friday and departing Keflavik on Monday at 9pm.

Booking Accommodations:

With four full days and three nights to fill, I consulted with Catherine who strongly suggested I make it over to Jökulsárlón Lake. Luckily for me, I was able to take advantage of her Iceland With Kids: Suggested Itineraries post before deciding that we would spend two nights in Vik and one night in Reykjavik. At Catherine’s prodding, I also began looking into accommodations in Vik and Reykjavik around Thanksgiving of last year, which seemed extremely early to me, until I remembered that Catherine’s family experienced difficulty securing accommodations despite beginning their search five months prior to their trip.

After a few hours of poking around online for options, I discovered that Catherine was quite correct and that numerous guest houses were showing up as rented through early May and up to mid-May. Spurred into action, I decided to book two nights at a cottage on Reynisfjara Beach and one night at a guest house in Reykjavik. Having previously had only a less than stellar experience with an Airbnb rental, I had originally hoped to stay at a hotel. But, there aren’t very many hotels and certainly none that were affordable. A basic Hilton in downtown Reykjavik was asking $300/night, whereas our one night stay at Nina’s Guesthouse was a much more affordable $185. Our two night stay at the cottage on Reynisfjara beach $515.99.  Since both the cottage and our room at the guest house included a private bath and free parking, I decided they were our best bet and went ahead despite my initial misgivings.

Booking Rental Car:

I knew I wanted to rent a car to get around Iceland, instead of relying on tours or groups. After searching around online, I decided I wanted to rent from a local Icelandic rental car company (versus a national chain) and I ended up on the Holiday Autos website, which provided me with quotes for various local Icelandic rental car companies. I secured a vehicle from Route 1.IS via Holiday Autos. The rental for the four days, three nights cost $359.36, and provided for an automatic transmission, four wheel drive vehicle, which included taxes, airport fee, breakdown assistance, collusion damage waiver, personal accident insurance, third party liability protection, and unlimited mileage. Although there were certainly cheaper options, knowing that I would be traveling solo with my eight year old, I really did not want to have to worry about anything beyond ensuring that we were safe, so this seemed to offer the most security and peace of mind. Unlike most rental car reservations, however, Holiday Autos charged us at the time of booking (November 2017), but the cancellation policy provided for a full refund if the reservation was cancelled 24 hours prior to pick up.

Scheduled Itinerary:

Having booked our flights, accommodations, and rental car, I mapped out the following itinerary:

Day One:

• 5am arrival at Keflavik Airport
• Viking World, located just 15 minutes from the airport and opening at 7am
• Driving to Reynisfjara Beach, visiting Seljalandsfoss Waterfall, Eyjafjallajokull, Skogafoss, Solheimasandur Beach, Solheimajokull, Dyrhalaey rocky outcrop, and Reynisfjara sand beach along the way.
• Staying at Reynisfjara cottage

Day Two:

• Making the 2.5 hour drive to Jökulsárlón for the glacial lagoon amphibious boat ride, visiting Eldhraun Lavafield, Fjaðrárgljúfur, and Vatnajökull along the way
• Returning to Reynisfjara beach cottage for the night

Day Three:

• Driving back to Reykjavik and staying at the guest house

Day Four: 

• Tour of the Lava Tunnel, located 30 minutes outside Reykjavik
• Blue Lagoon
• 9pm departure from Keflavik Airport

Although I had a long list of things I wanted to and hoped to see on the drive to/from Reynisfjara, I purposely did not over schedule our third day with activities, knowing it was extremely likely that we would not actually be able to see everything we hoped to on our first day. This ended up working out great, because after our red-eye flight, my son slept most of the way from Reykjavik to Reynisfjara on our first day, so we ended up using the third day to make up for what we missed on Day One.

Planning your own trip to Iceland with kids?  Continue reading about our Icelandic Weekend Getaway With Kids: Getting to Iceland and the First 18 hours, and be sure to check out our listing of all Iceland posts or join our Facebook group We Go To Iceland With Kids, a forum to ask questions and share ideas about family travel to Iceland.