Car Rental and Self-Drive in Iceland

One of the first decisions we made when planning travel to Iceland was to rent a car for the length of our trip. Factoring the distance between main attractions and knowing the unpredictable nature of travel in general but especially with kids, this was honestly a no-brainer and ended up working out really well for our family. I would HIGHLY recommend self-driving for anyone visiting Iceland. The stunning landscape kept us engaged for the whole 9 days, and the scenery was as varied as it was gorgeous, so the long drives never felt tedious.

Benefits to Renting a Car

Building our own itinerary

So many things, so little time! We wanted to fit in as many places as we could realistically, and knew that we might be more interested in some attractions and less in others. So we didn’t want to be tied to a tour group that might have different priorities. We weren’t sure if we would even be able to find tours that visited the same places we had in mind for each day.

Flexibility to visit attractions at your own pace

Every morning we had a goal time for leaving the house. Naturally, we were 5 minutes early every day.

HAHAHAHA… Wow, that was hysterical to even type…

Let me correct that. Naturally, we were running at least 15 min behind, more often 30+ min. If we needed to catch a tour bus, we would have been toast. And trust me, we are not a normally-late family. But that’s at home when we know what obstacles to expect getting out of the house. Any given day, we’d be running back into the house grabbing gear or snacks or last minute restroom trips (sorry, precariously potty-trained toddler in the mix). We DID get better as the trip went on, but I’m still glad we didn’t have to meet a tour bus any of the mornings.

Ability to adjust plans

We had two days on the trip when we had to majorly shift our plans around. Our first morning in Selfoss, we woke up to pouring rain. This was coming off of two busy days, and we knew the kids (and us, truthfully) were wearing thin on patience and stamina. We decided to push back all of our morning plans and didn’t leave the house until we headed out for lunch. We all really needed that morning to relax, and I am so glad we didn’t push it in the rain. The other day that we had to shift around was after a punctured tire in our rental car. (I know, this wouldn’t have even been an issue if we hadn’t rented a car, but it’s a good example of how wrenches get thrown into plans.) Scott had to spend a whole morning finding a place to replace the tire, and we had to push back our Into the Glacier Tour to the afternoon tour time.

Storage on the go

The weather in Iceland fluctuates so much. Depending on the clouds, the wind, temperatures can vary dramatically. Also, in a single day, your plans could easily involve hiking along a coast, soaking in a thermal springs, hiking behind a waterfall, and exploring the interior of a cave. The gear/attire for each of these activities would be different. Most days we packed the back of the car with layers and gear for a variety of activities. This felt like a luxury to not have to predict every specific need for the whole day and not have to minimize what to lug around. When in doubt, we tossed it in the trunk!

Portable Wi-Fi

We rented a portable Wi-Fi along with our car and it was WORTH EVERY PENNY. We got to use Waze (which identifies speed traps) and Google Maps for all of our routing, look up info about our destinations, stream music, keep in contact with our friends and family, and we didn’t have to worry at all about our international data plans. And the Wi-Fi unit was small enough (about the size of a cell phone) that we could bring it along at attractions and into our accommodations if their own Wi-Fi wasn’t as strong.

Kids could be kids

Our kids are pretty good in cars, but everyone has their moments. I’m grateful that we were able to handle any car tantrums in privacy instead of on a bus full of strangers trying to enjoy their own vacation. I’m also not sure if the kids would have napped much on a tour bus, but they managed to squeeze in a few key naps in their own car seats.

Tips for Toddler Road Tripping

We spent a LOT of time in the car on this trip. Every day was hours of driving. Our kids do well in the car at home, but I was not sure what to expect on this trip. I have to say – I am SO PROUD of them! They handled the car rides like pros… buuuuut… I have to take some of that credit. Since Scott drove 95% of the time, I was the designated kid-handler. My duties included fetching dropped toys, replenishing snacks, distributing beverages, and all around keeping those tiny people happy. What were my secrets?

• Snacks! And snacks! More snacks! We literally went through a bag of goldfish in 1.5 days. And our other go-tos were dry cereal, pretzels, fruit/veggie pouches, apples, bananas, granola bars, and we even ventured into cups of Skyr. (The older one handled his own, and I fed bites to the younger one.) To keep the snacks somewhat manageable, we had designated snack cups that I would refill as needed.

• Toys! We brought a bunch of toys from home (some of them brand new) and tried to “reveal” news ones every couple days. And then I would rotate toys in the car every couple days to keep them somewhat fresh. The hardest part for me was the extreme stretching and contortion required to find dropped toys that had rolled beneath seats. Next time I might prep with advanced yoga courses before our trip, ha!

• Music. When all else failed, we found a Disney playlist for a family sing-a-long. We’d make it a few songs before my three-year-old would yell at me to stop singing. Can’t blame him, I’ve heard my own voice (yikes).

• Restroom breaks. J is potty-trained but not like trustworthy potty-trained, so we had to make efforts to stop every time we saw a rest stop if it had been a couple hours since the last break. Sounds easy enough, but public restrooms were not always readily available. Along this same train of thought, we changed more than a couple of A’s diapers in the hatch back and backseat of the car. So just be prepared.

• Car naps… or not. I don’t have any tips for this. Initially we thought we could time long car rides during afternoon naps, but that just didn’t happen. We pushed our kids a lot on this trip. More than we planned to. Naps happened when they happened, and we just tried to compensate by giving them downtime in the evenings and letting them sleep in longer than normal in the mornings. We were lucky in this regard that J is at the age when he is starting to drop naps anyway, and A is some toddler unicorn that put will herself to sleep anywhere if she gets tired enough. All the napping credit goes to the kids because I admit that we failed in this area.

General Iceland Driving Tips

1. My first tip is something that I didn’t read anywhere. The only reason we had a heads up was because we had some friends just happen to visit Iceland a few weeks before us…. One. Lane. Bridges. You will be driving along and then all of a sudden there will be a bridge coming up and the road narrows down to one lane and you realize that TWO CARS CAN’T FIT ON THIS BRIDGE. Protocol says to treat the entire bridge like a stop sign. If a car is approaching from the other side ahead of you, wait your turn on your side of the bridge and then you can go once that other car clears. While this was extremely new to us, none of these bridges that we crossed were very long, and we never had any trouble crossing. Our friends, however, had an entertaining story about a much longer bridge and two groups of cars meeting in the middle and some mild conflict resolution to decide who needed to reverse out. So, head’s up – one lane bridges exist.

2. Be aware of the wind. The wind gusts can be incredibly strong and might come out of nowhere. There might be stretches of road when you are constantly fighting the wind, so just be cautious. Your rental car company will probably give you this reminder, but just in case, always park facing INTO the wind. The wind can be so strong that it literally rips off car doors in some locations.

3. Speed cameras are also a way of life in Iceland. You might think speeding won’t be a big deal, but be aware that there are randomly placed speed cameras around the country. If caught, you could receive a speeding ticket at some point after your trip.

4. I have mentioned multiple times the amazing scenery while driving around Iceland. It is only natural to want to stop occasionally for pictures or to soak it in. if you do pull over from a main road, please, please be mindful of where you stop. We saw a couple people *barely* pulled out of the main lanes and it made us nervous driving past. Just be mindful and know that there are built in stopping points in many places.

Our experience with Blue Car Rental

We rented our car from Blue Car Rental, and overall had a positive experience. After airfare, our car rental was our largest expense for the trip. To make sure we would have enough room for four people and all of our luggage, we rented a mid-size SUV. After reading some horror stories about the damage that can happen to vehicles in Iceland, we bought all of the insurance that they offered. We also rented car seats for the kids and a Wi-Fi router. So while it was a very expensive rental, it included quite a bit, and looking back, I am still glad that we went this route.

https://www.bluecarrental.is/

How to get to the rental office

Blue Car Rental is located right by Keflavik airport, in a strip center with several other car rental companies. It is a short walk from the airport, but they also have a shuttle bus (shared with these other rental companies) that runs from the arrivals area to the rental place.

When we landed, we weren’t sure exactly where to walk to get there or how long of a walk it would be, so we decided to wait for the shuttle. It just seemed like the safest bet after getting off a long flight, groggy kids and lots of luggage in tow. We followed the signs out of baggage claim to the waiting area in the back of the parking lot. Now this is where things were a little confusing (and I’m sure our travel exhaustion did not help). There was no shuttle bus when we arrived, but there were several charter buses loading up passengers. We weren’t sure if these buses were acting as a shuttle bus and others had the same confusion, and the bus drivers assured us that our actual bus would be here soon. We waited maybe 15 min and then the shuttle bus arrived and everyone that was waiting packed in.

Next time I would probably just walk the distance (now that I know where to go), and it would have been faster. Actually, when we dropped off the car at the end of the trip, we had just missed the shuttle pick-up and rather than keep the kids happy in the cold for 15-20 min, we walked to the airport. Not super easy with all of our luggage, but still manageable.

What size car?

Our rental car ended up being a Renault Koleos. For a European rental, the size was about what we expected, but the car was not what we in the US would probably consider a mid-size SUV. No worries though because we had plenty of room for our luggage, the kids were not cramped in the backseat, and the front seats were spacious.

Renting car seats

This was our first experience renting car seats. We’ve always brought ours along if we knew we would need them, but this time we didn’t know if we could physically manage all of our luggage, wrangle the toddlers, and make our way through the airport and to the car rental. I admit, I was veeeery nervous because I’ve heard of so many bad experiences with rental car seats being expired or broken somehow or the company flat out not having one available (even though reserved). Happily, I had nothing to worry about. The car seats were great! You could tell that they had been used but were relatively clean…. and being honest, we made our own messes in the car seats too.

I should also note that car seats in the US do not pass European safety standards and are illegal for use in Europe. I believe one of the reasons is the chest clip used in US car seats. They are considered a hazard by the European standards. This factored into our decision to rent the car seats, but I don’t think anyone would have checked if we had brought ours from home.

Tire issue

Our experience with Blue Car Rental did have one major disappointment. As we were heading toward Borgarnes, Scott noticed the tire pressure light come on, and a couple minutes after that, a warning came on that said “Punctured Tire”. We pulled over and did a visual inspection. Everything seemed to be fine so we continued on at slower speeds, and when we found a gas station, put air in the tire. Shortly after that, the warning came back on so we just decided to change the tire.

Thanks to Google, we were able to figure out where the spare tire was kept and how to use the odd carjack. Of course the spare was in the hatchback underneath ALL of our luggage. No big deal (major eye roll). Scott jumped into action changing the tire and the kids handled the ordeal like champs. The copious snacks I was doling out probably helped.

Once the tire was off, we saw the tire’s bad condition. It was so worn down that wire was exposed in multiple places. REALLY scary. We hadn’t been doing anything wild with this car, so we had definitely received the tire in that condition.

After a frustrating time reaching Blue Car initially and then few back-and-forths over the course of the evening, we were told to go to a certain auto shop in Borgarnes in the morning. (This happened on a Sunday.) Monday morning Scott left to get the tire replaced. Turns out that neither the original auto shop nor a SECOND auto shop in Borgarnes had the right size tire, so Scott had to go to Akranes (30 km away) where he finally got a replacement tire and we could continue on with our trip.

Blue Car covered the cost of the tire replacement (as they should have) and also refunded 10% of our rental fees, so ultimately, I think they handled it to our satisfaction. The customer service on Sunday was extremely frustrating (at one point, the agent implied that we would have to pay for the tire… “99% of the time, it’s the customer’s fault”), but the agent on Monday was much more responsive and sympathetic to the situation.

Car Return

Our car return couldn’t have gone more smoothly. I attribute this in large part to the insurance that we bought because the agent inspecting our car and said “not that this matters since you have the insurance”. So we unloaded all of our luggage, did a quick once over to make sure we didn’t leave anything – a forgotten toy could easily result in a state of emergency at the airport. Since we had just missed the airport shuttle, we walked back to the airport (a few blocks) and were officially headed home.