Snæfellsnes Peninsula (Day Trip)

The Snæfellsnes Peninsula is 'Iceland in miniature' — a 90-kilometre finger of land northwest of Reykjavik that contains a glacier-capped volcano (Snæfellsjökull, the setting for Jules Verne's 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'), black sand beaches, dramatic sea cliffs, lava fields, fishing villages, and the full range of Icelandic landscapes compressed into a single day trip.

The peninsula's highlights include Kirkjufell (the most photographed mountain in Iceland, a symmetrical cone that has appeared in Game of Thrones and every Iceland tourism brochure), Djúpalónssandur (a black pebble beach with the rusted remains of a British trawler shipwrecked in 1948), Arnarstapi (a coastal village with a sea arch and a cliff walk through nesting seabird colonies), and the Snæfellsjökull glacier itself (visible from Reykjavik on clear days, 120km across the bay).

The drive from Reykjavik takes about 2 hours (175km to the peninsula's base), and a full circuit of the peninsula is about 200km — manageable in a long summer day but requiring overnight accommodation in winter when daylight is limited. The peninsula is less visited than the Golden Circle and South Coast, which means the landscapes feel more personal — at several stops, you may be the only person at a viewpoint that in any other country would have a car park and a gift shop.