Vik, Iceland: An Excellent Day Trip From Reykjavik

If you make it to Iceland, don’t spend all your time in Reykjavik or you’ll miss fun times in and around Vik, a cute town on the southern tip.

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Vik, Iceland

The town of Vik is located on the southern tip of Iceland as you’ll see on the map below, boxed in red. Vik is about 184 km (114 mi) away from Reykjavik.

When you first arrive at Vik, you’ll find a rather cute, small town. We’ve found that generally outside of Reykjavik, the cities are fairly small. That said, there are restaurants, hotels, and churches available should you need them.

When you decide to drive from Reykjavik to Vik, you’ll get a good sense of just how different the scenery can be. You could go from a snowy mountain pass…

…to an area with almost no snow but plenty of waterfalls. Weather in Iceland hits each section at different times and in different ways. Plan ahead by checking out these two important websites:

https://road.is/ (live road closures and conditions)
https://en.vedur.is/alerts (weather alerts within the next 3-5 days)

A word of warning: plan enough time

If you’re planning to visit Vik with the purpose of going on a tour and are staying in Reykjavik, you need to plan more time than you otherwise think you’ll need. During normal, fair weather driving conditions, it might take 2.5 hours to get to Vik. (We saw two speed cameras along this route so don’t try to make up time.)

However, you’ll want to check live conditions. When we attempted to make the journey in late March, we planned for some delays and left Reykjavik assuming it would take us 3.5 hours. We thought that would have been plenty of time, but turns out we got stuck behind a large truck that got stuck in the snow. It took about an hour to clear the truck, meaning we missed our tour by about 20 minutes.

We were only two cars back. If only we left the hotel a minute earlier! Oh well.

As a result, if you’re trying to make the journey when it’s winter or when there is weather, we would recommend allotting 4 hours to the journey if there is something you booked that you simply can’t miss. Once you’re in Vik, you can check out other things the town has to offer from the list below.

What to do in and around Vik

Almost everything we point out in this list isn’t technically in Vik. That said, these experiences are an easy drive away from Vik and well worth a stop.

If you’re visiting national parks, expect to get hit with a parking fee. These national parks use cameras to monitor all cars that enter and exit the lot, so you’re not going to get out of paying for parking by being sneaky. Paying for parking is as simple as visiting the website from a QR code if you can’t find a pay station by the lot. You have 24 hours from the moment you leave to pay for parking or they will assess a late fee on the vehicle owner. If it’s a rental, your rental company might also tack on an administration fee too.

Reynisfjara (black sand beach)

Let’s start with the black sand beach, which has a parking lot that goes right up against the beach. Just drive into the area and you’ll immediately see the black sand all around.

Also, right in the parking lot is a small restaurant and some toilets if you need a pit stop.

Before talking about the black sand beach itself, we’ll say right up front–this place has a rising body count. It’s not the beach itself that is killing visitors but rather it’s from people not respecting how violent the waves can get here. You must take heed of the warning signs and do not get into the water. Don’t go anywhere near the water.

Even when looking at the waves away from the rocky areas of the black sand beach, you’ll see the waves can be a bit rough.

Still, the kids loved checking out the black sand beach. This particular black sand beach seems more like it just has a bunch of small black rocks. This isn’t your idyllic beach to just sunbathe in all times of the year–you can probably tell how cold it was and the wind wasn’t helping.

While you’re here, you can also check out a cave. It’s not that deep of a cave and really is just a carving from the waves battering the cliffs over time. But it’s pretty neat to just look at all the different layers of rocks while you’re here.

Truthfully, there are two caves here. We went to the cave immediately to the left in this picture, which has no risk of death or injury when we were there. The other cave is around the corner, where that big wave splashed up on the rocks. Perhaps during low tide it might be easier to visit, but going there now would most certainly be risking death. Think it’s cold walking around on land? It’s going to be far worse in the water.

Dyrhólaey

In theory, if you were to follow the black sand beach going away from the above caves, you’d find yourself over near Dyrhólaey. However, what you’d actually want to do is get back in the car and drive there along a couple of winding paths because it’s not connected.

What would you find at Dyrhólaey? This is one of the more popular places to come see the puffins. That’s right! Puffins are plentiful in Iceland but they’re only here when it’s breeding season (May to August). The puffins normally are out in sea and migrate back here to nest and feed. Around July and August, some of them start to vacate their nests, leaving by about mid-August or so.

You could see some near the black sand beaches, but we hear the viewing is better from Dyrhólaey specifically. As with many of the other locations on this list, there is a dedicated parking lot for Dyrhólaey.

Skógafoss

We’ll teach you some Icelandic language. When you see the word “-foss”, it means “waterfall”. Now you’ll know what to expect when you arrive at Skógafoss. There’s a waterfall here. Make sense?

Again, there is a parking lot here that will require payment within 24 hours.

This site is a bit bigger–not only is there a restaurant and toilets, but there’s also a hotel here. If you wanted to stay just outside the Vik city limits and really enjoy waterfalls, this could be the option for you.

When you park at the lot, don’t be shocked to find a long walk over to the waterfall itself.

And then when you get close, you’ll find two paths. One that goes right up to the waterfall itself and a set of stairs that goes up to the top. We’ll start with the staircase, which is what we did first though there is no wrong order.

The upper route

Be prepared for quite the climb going up and down. Only one singular handrail exists while the other side has a chain that wouldn’t prevent anyone from falling off. The railing typically is along the steeper side, so there’s that.

As you climb further up, you’ll see the waterfall in a different perspective. I’ve always liked how powerful waterfalls don’t quite look as powerful as the water peacefully meanders along the river before it falls.

Those afraid of heights might not like some of the views, including here where you can see the people down below at the base.

But for others, it’s nice getting a bird’s eye view of the terrain. You could even see the ocean off in the distance. This is exactly what we were hoping to see in Iceland–plenty of nature and a growing respect for it.

There is a walking path up here commonly called “Waterfall Way” in case you’d like to explore the area a bit more. You’ll find some more waterfalls along this 16 km (10 mi) roundtrip journey. If you’re interested in taking the hike, you might want to consider staying at the hotel here or staying in Vik. It’s going to be tough to take that walk while staying in Reykjavik.

Additionally, for the brave-hearted, you can stand on a small cliff to take a photo with the river and the top of the waterfall in the background. Be careful–that first step’s a doozy.

Taking a picture on a cliff above the water

The lower route

Back down at the base, you’ll see just how powerful Skógafoss is. Ideally, you’ll have some waterproof shoes as you might need to hop across stones to get over to the waterfall.

And just look at that–right when we took a photo of us in front of the waterfall, a rainbow snuck in behind us. The only thing we’re missing is the pot of gold at both ends of the rainbow.

Family picture with rainbow in background

The rainbow persisted for a while and it was simply magical just standing underneath this monster of a waterfall.

What were the kids doing? Playing in the snow and having snowball fights. It’s not like we get much snow in Southern California, so they have to spend every moment they can playing in the snow. I won’t blame them for not paying more attention to the waterfall.

Kids playing in the snow, ignoring the rainbow and waterfall

Seljalandsfoss

Now that we know that -foss means waterfall, you can take an educated guess on what’s here. That’s right–Seljalandsfoss is home to not just one but several waterfalls.

As with the other sites above, this one similarly requires payment to park here. It’d be nice if you could just pay once and have it valid at all locations but it doesn’t work that way.

Seljalandsfoss is a smaller attraction, so we’re back to a small store and a small restaurant, but at least the toilets are normal-sized.

Seljalandsfoss shop and quick service food

The main waterfall is awaiting you right at the start. You’ll see it immediately when you enter the parking lot.

There is a walking path here that can take you immediately behind a waterfall. This walking path is much shorter at just 1.9 km (1.2 mi) and there isn’t a large staircase to climb. If you want a nice walk but can’t stand the climb around Skógafoss, Seljalandsfoss is for you.

Along the walk, you’ll find some small wooden bridges that will take you around. That makes for some nice viewing if nothing else.

We would have explored the whole walking path, but the kids were getting a little tired of waterfalls at this point. Maybe I should have ditched them and told them to just play in the snow?

Katla Ice Cave

The real reason we wanted to come to Vik in the first place was to check out the Katla Ice Cave. These ice caves are only open during the winter months and close around April, though it’s heavily dependent on weather. If it’s not cold enough, it’s dangerous to go inside. Seems logical, right?

Iceland has many different locations of ice caves. We ultimately settled on Katla because the tours going into those ice caves allowed children as young as 6 to go in–just the age of Char. Other ice caves seemed to not allow kids younger than about 8 or 9 to go inside.

Well, this is the tour that we ultimately missed, so we cannot comment on the ice caves themselves. Next time, if we come in winter, we might just end up staying in Vik to make things a lot less stressful on us. You know what they say, fool me once…

LAVA Centre

Official website: https://lavacentre.is/

As you’re driving over from Reykjavik to Vik, you’re going to see this Lava Centre on the side of the road. It’s an interactive museum that specializes in volcanoes and earthquakes. Inside, there is both a movie and the full-on experience that gets you a view of volcanoes, eruptions, and lava flows. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to stop by and check it out on this trip, but we intend to give a try next time we’re in town,.

Perhaps most interesting for those not there in person is their live camera aiming up towards the sky. It does more than just show what the weather is like during the day. If you ever get bored at night–even when not in Iceland–and want to see the Northern Lights, this camera is for you. Obviously, you’ll need fair weather conditions and plenty of recent solar activity, but it’s neat to see.

The Lava Show in Vik

Official website: https://www.lavashow.com/

There are two locations for the Lava Show: Reykjavik and Vik. Between the two, Reykjavik is the more popular location because that’s where most people are. We’ve heard Vik is supposed to be unique from the Reykjavik version, but we only visited the show in Reykjavik.

We assume the premise ultimately is the same between the two locations. You’ll sit around and watch real lava enter the room where a guide will safely show you the properties of plasma over time. This is the only place in the world to come see real lava this close unless you jump into a volcano. We don’t recommend doing that. But we do recommend checking out the Lava Show at either of their locations.

Psst–you might want to try promo codes VIKTOO or FLYOVER to get a discount, which we got from visiting attractions in Reykjavik.

The Soup Company

Official website: https://thesoup.company/

Directly connected to the Lava Show in Vik is The Soup Company, a modest-sounding restaurant that specializes in soup. Weird, huh? This family-owned restaurant makes some excellent soups, which we discovered when we stopped in for lunch.

After we ordered at the counter, we had a seat in the restaurant while the kids stared longingly at the fresh snow coming down outside.

A short wait later, we got our meals. The kids wanted some broccoli cheddar soup, which was better than most we’ve had. Sometimes the cheese can get too heavy but it was better balanced here. He got his in a bread bowl, which was completely unnecessary. We found out later that you could just get as much bread as you want for dipping. I guess the difference with the bread bowl is that it’s black like the neighboring black sand beach.

Jenn and I shared a trio of soups. From left to right in the photo below, we had the hurry curry fish soup, the red hot lava soup, and the Indian lentil soup. Each had their distinct flavors and some of them are on the spicier side. Heat levels, vegan, and other dietary restrictions are clearly labeled on the menu before ordering. When it’s cold outside, soups like these are incredibly comforting.

We also ordered a pesto panini, which was actually very delicious. If you’re in the mood for a sandwich, this ranks among the best we’ve had in a long time. The bread is excellent and the flavors inside just work so well together. Highly recommended, and it’s a bonus if you want some soup on the side–if you have the appetite for it, that is.

A quick note about The Soup Company. You can actually get complimentary seconds of a bowl of soup. They ask that it’s only supposed to be for the person who paid for the meal (sorry, Jenn and the kids) to keep costs down. But you just walk up to this counter, bring your bowl, and ask for which soup you want. This counter is also where you can get bread if you need more.

It’s incredibly generous of them to offer up extra soup, especially with how expensive Iceland can be. This was our favorite lunch during our entire trip to Iceland.

Vik is the gateway to several glaciers

You remember what glaciers are, right? Those large, solid sheets of ice that are trapped up on land and in the mountains? The last one we saw in person was back in Alaska, but the same idea holds here.

When driving between Reykjavik and Vik, you’ll see two glaciers off in the distance if you look towards the center of the island. The two glaciers are Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull. However, if you just stick to the road, you’re probably not going to see much more than the tips of the mountains from where they’re resting.

However, the much larger glacier you might have interest in seeing is Vatnajokull Glacier. This glacier is a whopping 5 hour drive from Reykjavik so we’re going to say it’s not possible to see as a daytrip. However, if you use Vik as your base, the drive will only take you just under 2 hours with fair driving conditions. This is the largest glacier in Iceland, spanning about 7,900 square kilometers or about 3,000 square miles.

This glacier is home to a national park (the largest in all of Europe), with camping, plenty of hiking trails, and a cafeteria.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to check out this glacier on our visit since we were just making a daytrip from Reykjavik. Next time, if we stay the night around Vik, we’ll be sure to check it out.

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