Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher
Lonely Planet Iceland is your passport to all the most relevant and up-to-date advice on what to see, what to skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Splash around in the Blue Lagoon's geothermal water, catch a glimpse of the celestial Northern Lights, or take a boat trip among the icebergs; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Iceland and begin your journey now!
Inside Lonely Planet Iceland Travel Guide:
- Colour maps and images throughout
- Highlights and itineraries show you the simplest way to tailor your trip to your own personal needs and interests
- Insider tips save you time and money and help you get around like a local, avoiding crowds and trouble spots
- Essential info at your fingertips - including hours of operation, phone numbers, websites, transit tips, and prices
- Honest reviews for all budgets - including eating, sleeping, sight-seeing, going out, shopping, and hidden gems that most guidebooks miss
- Cultural insights give you a richer and more rewarding travel experience - including customs, history, literature, cinema, music, politics, wildlife, and cuisine
- Over 37 local maps
- Useful features - including Month-by-Month (annual festival calendar), Ring Road Planner, and Outdoor Adventures
- Coverage of Reykjavik, the Westfjords, the Highlands, North Iceland, East Iceland, South Iceland, the Golden Circle, Southwest Iceland, the Eastfjords, Akureyri, Hunafloi, and more
The Perfect Choice: Lonely Planet Iceland, our most comprehensive guide to Iceland, is perfect for those planning to both explore the top sights and take the road less travelled.
- Looking for more extensive coverage? Check out Lonely Planet's Scandinavia guide for a comprehensive look at all the region has to offer.
Authors: Written and researched by Lonely Planet, Brandon Presser, Carolyn Bain, and Fran Parnell.
About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves in.
TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia)
Fran Parnell's passion for Scandinavia began while studying for a masters degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic. Initial brushes with Old Norse left her swearing at the grammar book, but a strange slideshow featuring sublime Icelandic mountains and a matter-of-fact man who'd literally dug his own grave awakaned a fascination with Iceland that has just kept on growing. Since then, Fran has returned to the country as often as finances have allowed and, when not in Iceland, can read, think and dream of little else. Fran has also worked on Lonely Planet's guides to Scandinavian Europe, Sweden and Reykjavik.
Most helpful customer reviews
47 of 48 people found the following review helpful.
not as helpful for off-season travelers (Nov-March)
By occasional adventurer
(updated) I bought this guide in hopes of travel tips for my upcoming trip in March. I'm disappointed that there's little mention of winter travel, with most information for tours, accommodation, museums, etc. for May-Oct (especially considering that Icelandair presents flight deals and budget-friendly packages for the off-season travel period). The book suggests there's little offered at this time, when internet research proves otherwise (for the West, Southwest, and South of Iceland, anyway)!
There's only a little bit of information on tour companies, with about a dozen listed in the Reykjavik section, and a rundown of each. That was a little reassuring, but internet research and tripadvisor reviews will prove to be more helpful. Not much information on the road conditions in late-Winter/early-Spring and whether it is recommended to rent a car and drive during this time period. (It is possible to rent a car, but is it unwise?--internet suggests car rental in March could be okay) (Is it risky to rely on the public bus to other cities in March?--internet suggests yes). The internet is proving to be more fruitful with winter traveling - look at tripadvisor forums, blogs, there's a website with current road conditions...
In the end we've decided to rent a car for most of the trip, as it gives us more freedom, and go with a company on 1-2 tours. Between two people touring by car comes out to the same as the medium-large tours, if not less. That is including the cost of gas. I will keep on with the google research for my trip, and I may keep this book for the descriptions of places. I'll definitely want Lonely Planet Iceland for when I one day take a summer trip (best: car rental and camping)!
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful.The best guide I’ve found; it’s a good book
By CompLit
We drove the Ring Road around Iceland using the Lonely Planet book as a guide. I read three guide books, and the Lonely Planet is the best one I found; it worked well for us. Although the Lonely Planet is not as bad as the other two, all three books suffer from going into great detail about driving somewhere without telling you just where in Iceland you are. You’ll find yourself scratching your head going back and forth between the book and a map. You will need a good map; the best I found is the Iceland (Adventure Travel Map) by National Geographic. The maps in the books are marginally useful; quite often reading them is like looking at a map through a straw. Also, since these books can be updated only so often, be sure to use Internet. For example, there is a three-star hotel in Hellissandur near the tip of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. The most recent edition of Lonely Planet doesn’t mention Hellissandur at all, except to say that it exists.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.A very useful guide
By RCyyz
I just got back from my first time in Iceland and I have to say, the Lonely Planet Guide certainly came in handy.
I flew in to Reykjavik then picked up the rental car and drove clockwise around the Ring Road. Lonely Planet never let me down and made it easy to plan ahead by deciding where to go and what to see. As I purchased the eBook, it was easier still to take it with me since it doesn't add any weight to my iPad. :-)
Highlighting passages in the book for later reference was easy and handy. The links to the table of contents were good and the built-in maps, for the most part, were adequately detailed to be useful. If you have a data connection you can also link to Google Maps for certain highlights, but Google Maps in Iceland is somewhat lacking in detail and not 100% accurate.
My main complaint with this guide is that it's a bit hard to follow where certain places are. If you've never been to a place and are unfamiliar with the local geography, the reading about a village or significant site without placing it on the map is a bit difficult. For this reason I wish LP had put more links in the eBook. Ideally I'd like to see the name of a place as a link. When you touch it, a pop-up map should come up with the right place highlighted. This would make using the eBook so much easier.
My other peeve with the book is that it doesn't always do things in the same order. I drove the Ring Road clockwise, but you could just as easily do it counterclockwise. And I think most people going to Iceland will tend to do the Ring Road in one direction or the other. It should follow then that the book should list places in more or less clockwise or counterclockwise order. For the most part they do actually do this, but not always which was annoying. Like I said, if you've never been somewhere then just reading about it won't necessarily help you place things geographically. So reading about things in order would have helped a lot.
I also would have appreciated a stronger guide to Icelandic pronunciation. Some things are explained – the book notes for example that Höfn is pronounced as “Hup” which is pretty accurate. But nowhere did I see that Pingvellir is pronounced “Thingveteer”. It’s not a huge problem; as you travel through Iceland just pay attention and you’ll eventually be able to guess accurately on pronunciations. But it would have been nice if the book had more notes on this.
The restaurant recommendations were surprisingly good. I don't usually trust guide books for food recommendations but I found the LP to be very good. I had made my own hotel arrangements and thus did not need the book for this, but I imagine they would be pretty accurate.
On the whole then I would say that this book has been well researched and well written by some folks who have obviously travelled extensively in Iceland at different times of the year. The love of the country that the authors have developed comes though in their writing which is something I enjoyed. The authors are also quite fair in terms of observations and opinions.
There are a few guide books out there on Iceland, but I’m glad I picked up the Lonely Planet to help me on my trip.
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