Car Travel Advice Nov 2-9

Hi - We're flying into Reykjavik on Nov. 2 and staying for 7 days. We'd like to rent a car and explore the area (day trips, we have a room in the capital for the whole time) and I'm wondering if a small economy car will be ok or if the roads might be bad. Can anyone suggest some nice day trips from Reykjavik, either to see the outdoors or some nice little towns to visit?

Also, Icelandic seems like a crushingly hard language, is it worth my time to try to learn a little bit or can I avoid the Ugly American label if I politely try English on people? Thanks so much for your help!

http://www.vegagerdin.is/english/road-conditions-and-weather/ you can check road conditions here.

From Reykjavik you can do the Golden Circle go to the Blue Lagoon, Thingvellier, the problem is you have very short day light hours so you can go to far.

The ring road and the ones you'll be using are in good condition and a small economy car should be fine.

Try to learn at least hallo, please and thank you, most people do speak good english, we only had a problem once that nobody spoke english, but than some pointing got us what we wanted.

Small economy car is fine. Your car will be fitted with winter tyres if that is required by the conditions. Even in winter, the stuff that falls out of the sky is usually wet in coastal areas, but it can be solid white and slippery from time to time, and there may be some temporary disruption until response has been organised.

No one expects you to speak any Icelandic, precisely because it is a difficult language spoken by only 300,000 people. The younger generation practically all speak English perfectly, and most of the older generation too. I've occasionally come across a checkout assistant without useful English, but probably someone else in the shop will translate if required. Quite a bit of imported stuff in shops is labelled in Danish, and the biggest shopping problem I've had is that not so many Icelanders speak much Danish these days - when you are heading off into the wilderness camping for 10 days and you find 3 different kinds of oats in opaque packaging labelled in Danish, then you want to make sure you are getting 3kg of porage oats not pinhead oatmeal.

Learning just a little bit about Icelandic language, which has rather surprising pronunciation rules, will enhance your experience of going there. It is particularly worth learning some food vocabulary, especially for milk products, if you wish to make sure you are getting a litre of milk not some kind of liquid yogurt, of which there are several kinds available - though it is probably interesting to taste some of the latter. I like knowing the place name elements. In that context It is worth realising that grammatical changes can be a bit dramatic, turning vollur into vellir, fjordur into fjardar and firdir, askja into oskju, (I have not written the accents) etc, as then you can recognise a bit more from the names, which you can then soon parse, most of them being at the level of Smoky Bay (Reykjavik), Snow Mountain Peninsular (Snaefellsnes), etc, and rarely being concealed by the archaisms and multiple language influences of so many continental European place names.

Can anyone suggest some nice day trips from Reykjavik, either to see the outdoors or some nice little towns to visit?

Iceland isn't really about nice little towns, and most settlements are rather functional, though they may be nicely located. Stykkisholmur is probably the nearest nice village to R, but it is a 2h30 drive, and whilst it's nice to stay there and enjoy its attractiveness, you can walk around it in 10 mins so it isn't really a visitor attraction in itself. But it is located in an interesting area and it is certainly worth going there and staying a couple of nights to explore the area. People do go to Snaefellsnes as a day-trip, but since a round trip of the main sights it is likely to involve around 500km driving it isn't to my taste, and November doesn't really give enough daylight for it .

Most people do the Golden Circle in a day, but staying for a week in the short daylight season Thingvellir can be given a whole day, and you can go to Gullfoss and Geysir another day and try to be there when the coach tours aren't. There's hiking near Hveragerdi including a warm stream to bathe in - google "Hengill Hiking" for maps etc. There's lava caves between Hveragerdi and Stokkseyri. You can go to Hesteyri (Westmann Islands) for the day, fly or ferry. There's Hvalfjordur and the walk to Glymur waterfall, highest or second highest waterfall in Iceland (I'm not convinced the higher one that was found in a very remote location is a permanent feature). There's the Krysuvik thermal area, and worth driving along the S coast of Reykjanes nearby, and the tip of Reykjanes to explore. There's stuff to see around Borgarnes like Barnafoss and Grabok crater, and some more lava caves but they may not be accessible off-season. People do trips to the southern shore around Vik and Skogar, but that's probably too far without an overnight or two for the time of year. You can go horseriding and walk on a glacier and go dry-suit diving and other adrenalin trips. There's the Inside A Volcano incredibly expensive caving trip. You can walk up Mt Esja. When the weather is too horrible for being outdoors, as it doubtless will be from time to time, you can go to the national museum. Not worth putting a timetable together in advance as you won't know about the weather till the time.

Great, thank you for your advice!

Thanks very much for your help!