Iceland Highlights

Iceland's South Coast is the country's most dramatic and diverse landscape — a 200km stretch of coastline from Reykjavík to Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon that takes in Seljalandsfoss (a waterfall you can walk behind), Skógafoss (a 60-metre curtain of water), Reynisfjara black sand beach (with its extraordinary basalt columns), Vatnajökull glacier (Europe's largest), and Jökulsárlón — a glacier lagoon where icebergs calve from the glacier and float to the sea. The South Coast is Iceland's most photographed landscape and one of the world's great road trips.

The Snæfellsnes Peninsula is often called "Iceland in miniature" — a 90km peninsula in western Iceland that concentrates the country's most dramatic landscapes into a single day trip from Reykjavík. The centrepiece is Snæfellsjökull — a glacier-capped stratovolcano that Jules Verne used as the entrance to the centre of the earth in his 1864 novel. The peninsula also has extraordinary basalt rock formations at Lóndrangar, the black pebble beach at Djúpalónssandur, the fishing village of Arnarstapi, and some of the best whale watching in Iceland.