I bought my fiancé flights to iceland for christmas. With little vaca days left in the year, we turned this trip into a 'long weekend', leaving Thursday night and flying back on Tuesday afternoon. Being based in NY, this was easy to do since it's only a 5 hour flight from the city. Here's how we turned our trip to Iceland into a long weekend:

Itinerary

day 0: red eye to iceland! day 1: golden circle & blue lagoon

day 2: south coast: waterfalls, black beaches and white glaciers

day 3: south coast: jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and return back to reykjavik

day 4: snaefellsnes national park

day 5: head home!

Day 1

For the entirety of the trip, I booked tour guides. I didn't want the pressure of renting a car and having to know what to visit. There are several factors of renting a car - such as worrying about gas, directions and weather - that I didn't want to think about. Since we took a red eye Thursday night, we didn't waste any time to start our touring. Our flight landed ~6am Friday AM. We took a flybus to downtown Reykjavik and boarded our first tour by 9:30am. It was a risk - but we made it! The airport is fairly easy to navigate and the bus ride was only 45 min to downtown. I used 'Get your guide' tours for almost every. Day 1, we did the golden circle & blue lagoon tour. NOTE: you need to reserve your blue lagoon ticket separate from this reservation

Day 2

For days 2 & 3 we decided to two day/1 night tour of the South Coast. We booked 'get your guide tour' south coast tour. This was a fantastic tour - we hit all the major hot spots on the south coast. Day 1 included famous waterfalls and a glacier hike.

Day 3

Day 3 was apart of the two day south coast tour. We visited places like Diamond Beach and the dragon cave from Game of Thrones.

Day 4

Ok we were so close nixing the Snaefellsnes Peninsula from our trip. I'm so glad we did.. it had breath taking views of the coast, the farmlands and mountains. We did the 'Get your guide tour': snaefellsnes national park.

Day 5

We enjoyed reykjavik & head home!

Where to stay

Night 1: airbnb link

Night 2: hofn hotel. This was booked through the tour but if you're planning to south coast, we really enjoyed this hotel.

Night 3: airbnb link. I really need to give this a proper review: I saw on airbnb you could camp in a bubble under the stars and HAD TO BOOK THIS. Since we visited in June, this is when Iceland has close to 24 hours of light. So we didn't get to see the "stars" - but as you can see in the 4th picture, the sun never really set - which was even cooler! That photo was taken at ~12:35am. DISCLAIMER: I was under the impression that we'd be one of several bubble tents in the park... it turned out, this was a single bubble tent on a mini golf course/childern's amusement park. We had a good laugh but fully took advantage of this. As the only residents on the park (besides other local campers), we had to the mini golf course to ourselves. They offered us a free round of golf and free beers.

If you're wondering: They had a communal trailer with a shower, sink and bathroom. It wasn't great, to say the least. But we made it work.