Traveling around Iceland is easy by car due to Route 1, otherwise known as the Ring Road. Route 1 circles the entire country (minus the Snaefellsnes Pennisula) and allows visitors to easily see many of the different landscapes and tourist attractions Iceland has to offer. Check out our Top 10 Things to See & Do Around Iceland’s Ring Road for just a glimpse of what this road trip has to offer. To make your road trip a little easier, here are some tips we learned from our trip:

#1 Stop at all the Scenic Viewpoint signs along the Ring Road – Some of the stops were
weren’t super exciting but others had hidden waterfalls, glacier views, craters to climb or beautiful lava fields

#2 NOT ALL OF IT IS PAVED! – This was the most surprising things for us. There is not much warning before the road changes from paved to gravel so keep an eye out especially if you have a 2 wheel drive car

#3 Be careful of one lane bridges – Most of the bridges along the Ring Road are only wide enough for one car to cross at a time. Slow down and check the other side before crossing.

#4 Watch out for sheep on the road – Sheep in Iceland are free to roam the mountain sides to graze. There’s fencing set up to try to keep them off the roads but fairly often (mainly on the northern side of the country) the sheep were walking and crossing the roads as we were driving by.

#5 To get gas you need a credit/debit card with a pin – In order to pay at the pump along the Ring Road be sure to bring a credit or debit card with a 4 digit pin number to go with it! There aren’t a lot of gas stations along the route, especially in the north, so fill up whenever you have the chance.

#6 Know the tourist attraction symbol – When you see a road sign with this squiggly symbol that means that it is directing you to a tourist attraction. Even if you don’t recognize the name, if the symbol leads you nearby it is probably worth the detour!

#7 Stock up on snacks and drinks when you are in a larger city, there aren’t many places to stop – We stopped at the grocery store and got sandwich supplies to eat for lunches along the road and it was a good thing we did. It allowed us to eat on the go wherever we wanted but there was never many other options along the road

#8 Use the bathroom every chance you get – similar to the limited food options along the road there aren’t very many places to take bathroom breaks. Thankfully many of the tourist attractions have some form of bathroom

#9 Addresses for destinations are usually just town names – We had a bit of a scare at the beginning of our trip when we realized we were given what seemed to be town names for our Airbnbs. Turns out we had nothing to worry about since the “towns” were basically just house names

#10 If you aren’t driving in winter you can get by with a 2 wheel drive (2WD) car – we rented our 2WD car in mid-Sept and didn’t have any major problems along the way. Note, as said before, some of the roads are not paved so a 2WD car will slow you down a bit for some stretches

#11 Download a music playlist or audiobook for the drives as there will be long periods of time spent between destinations. While Iceland’s landscape is beautiful to watch along the way, a little extra entertainment can’t hurt.

Now that you’ve read your tips, you’re ready to get started planning your own road trip around Ring Road! Check out our top things to see on the Ring Road to help plan your itinerary!