Before leaving for our 10-day trip to Iceland, I did some major research. It was my first international trip after Covid, after all, and I wanted to be prepared! I checked all the entry restrictions, made sure I had the right plug adaptors (I always forget about that until the last minute), and made a painstaking and overly-full itinerary.
But of course, there are always things you don’t really realize until you’re actually there and experiencing them. Here are some things you should know before you go to Iceland.
1. Eating out is extremely expensive.
Iceland is well-known as one of the most expensive countries in the world, so this might not be much of a surprise. In a country where almost everything has to be imported, and restaurants outside the capital are generally few and far in between, eating out is shockingly expensive. A simple bowl of traditional soup can cost anywhere between 1600-2200 ISK (~12-18 USD), and entrees such as hamburgers, grilled fish, or ribs easily average around 3600 ISK (~29 USD) or more. Prepare your wallets if you’re planning on eating out for most meals!
2. Gas is extremely expensive.
Maybe I should’ve just made the first item on this list “everything is expensive,” but this one adds up fast. Seeing as most people drive around Iceland, you’ll burn through gas very quickly, and it’s very pricey—around 250 ISK a liter or 8 USD a gallon. Yes, $8 per gallon…and I thought California gas prices were expensive. Driving around the Ring Road, we filled up gas at least once a day, sometimes twice if we were driving long distance.
Wondering how expensive Iceland really is? See the cost breakdown of our Iceland trip here.
3. The weather can be extremely unpredictable.
When I was reading up on Iceland guides, I saw multiple sites that said Iceland has a saying, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” I’m going to argue that this isn’t actually the case—the weather wasn’t oscillating wildly between sunny and thunderstorms every hour. However, the weather is unpredictable and can vary between regions. For example, it was so foggy in Snæfellsnes that we couldn’t see where we were driving, but ten minutes down the road and it was so sunny and bright that we had to turn the AC on in our car. The forecast is also notoriously wrong, so I wouldn’t set too much store by the weekly weather report.
4. The season will affect what activities you can do. (Time also)
This might seem like a no-brainer, but in the summer you won’t be able to see the Northern Lights in Iceland without extremely specialized equipment. You also won’t be able to do some ice cave or glacier hikes because the ice has melted too much. In the winter, obviously snowstorms will limit many of the outdoors activities that you can do. Lakes and some waterfalls will freeze, and the weather conditions will make some hikes too dangerous to attempt on your own.
Because Iceland is located so close to the North Pole, the amount of daylight also varies wildly depending on season. In the summer, you’ll get to experience the midnight sun and only a couple hours of dim light (midnight to maybe 3AM), whereas in the winter you’ll only get a few hours of daylight on the shortest days of the year. Make sure to pick a season in advance and know what you can and can’t do!
5. You can use a credit card for almost everything.
Iceland uses its own currency, called the Icelandic Krona (ISK). Cash is almost completely unnecessary, and we didn’t even bother to exchange currency when traveling in Iceland—even the more remote locations we stayed at still took credit card for bookings and food. The only thing you might need cash for is small fees or donations to local hot springs and facilities, the kind that are owned and/or operated by one person. We only did this once, and just used USD.
6. You cannot pay for gas without a PIN.
Following up on the previous point…Icelandic cards have PINs, so if you try to use an American credit card at the gas station, it’ll ask you for a PIN and you won’t be able to proceed. You can either go into the gas station and ask the attendant to open up the gas pump for you and pay after that, or you can get a prepaid gas card (we usually got them in 10,000 ISK increments). Having a prepaid gas card comes in handy in case you need to fill up on gas during hours when the gas station store is closed.
7. Driving in Iceland is different…
This is mostly for people from the United States, but wow people in Iceland drive quite slow. I don’t think we saw anyone driving more than 120 km/hr even on the rural highways, which is a cool 75 mph. However, the roads are also much windier and are often broken up by single-lane bridges and roundabouts. Seriously, I was not prepared for the sheer number of roundabouts in Iceland. Driving into or out of Reykjavik, I’m pretty sure we encountered at least a dozen.
The single-lane bridges also require you to slow down, for obvious reasons. A local told us that the Icelandic government has been using coronavirus downtime to convert some of the single-lane bridges to double-lane bridges, which is great, but there are just too many of them…at least they’re trying!
On the bright side, for our Americans reading, you do not need an international driver’s license to drive in Iceland, and they also drive on the right side of the road. No worries there!
Now you’re all prepared for all the wacky things no one told you about Iceland. Feel more confident armed with all this knowledge? Time to plan your trip!
