If you’ve spent any time with us at Sidequest: Iceland, you know we’re big believers in two things:

1. travel should feel like an adventure, not a crowded chore, and
2. the best stories start where the guidebooks end.

So after years of showing guests our favorite places, answering DMs about “where should I go?” and “no really, where do you go?”, and watching travelers light up when they stumble into a café or hot pot they didn’t even know existed… we decided it was time.

We built a guide.

Not a guide, but our guide — equal parts insider intel, geeky enthusiasm, cozy chaos, and genuine local love.

What Makes This Guide Different

Most guidebooks are written from a polite, neutral distance. This one? Not so much.

This guide was pulled directly from our lived experience - 10+ years of exploring Iceland, a career in travel tech, and a deep, borderline unreasonable love for cafés, hot pots, and backroads. It’s filled with the places we actually go, recommend to friends and family, and rave about over coffee. It’s not exhaustive, not formal, and absolutely not trying to cover every waterfall, restaurant, or hotel in the country.

Instead, it’s:

• The stuff we swear by
• The places we return to
• The gems people don’t know about until they do
• The things we want visitors to feel excited, confident, and curious enough to try

It’s a guidebook built from real life — and maybe a few Snúður (cinnamon buns).

A Quick Tour of What’s Inside

🏙 Reykjavík: Cooler Than You Think (though not as cosmopolitan as this emoji)

Your journey starts in the capital with our favorite:

• cafés and bakeries (we have Opinions™️)
• restaurants, from Icelandic home-style soups to high-end small plates
• brunch spots, wine bars, happy hours, and rooftop mischief
• neighborhood pools, museums, galleries, and hidden corners
• locally-run shops and studios, many hosted by women or foreign-born creators
• annual events, from Light Festival to Airwaves

Think of it as Reykjavík’s ultimate side quest menu — curated so you can unlock your ideal version of the city.

🌄 “The Countryside”: It's why you're here, most likely!

Iceland outside Reykjavík feels like an entirely different universe: fewer people, more waterfalls, and a lot of gas-station snacks. Inside you'll find:

• Our favorite road-trip eats (chaotic but honest)
• Scenic, quirky, or unforgettable stays — glamping domes, cabins with boats as hot pots, boutique hotels nestled in fjords
• Where we’d actually send our friends, depending on region

It’s the kind of intel you usually only get from someone who lives here (and has stayed at more places than most locals).

🥾 Favorite Hikes (for Every Energy Level)

Whether you’re the “short scenic trail” type or the “22 km between glaciers” type:

• Classic Reykjavík-area trails
• Reykjanes volcanic routes
• Backlands adventures like Fimmvörðuháls and Laugavegur
• Secret viewpoints, seasonal tips, and where you’ll actually find lupines

This section reads a bit like someone’s personal hiking notebook — because it basically is.

♨️ Hot Pots, Nature Baths & Lagoons. #foundersfavorite

Yes, the Blue Lagoon and Sky Lagoon exist. No, that’s not the whole story.

We give you:

• geothermal rivers
• glacial lagoons
• floating huts
• neighborhood pools
• Westfjörds hidden gems
• a full list of our “not-hot-yet-but-wait-for-it” spots

If you leave Iceland without pruning fingers, that’s on you.

🌌 Aurora Chasing, Simplified yet scientific

Where to go, what weather you need, and why you should never book a boat-only photography tour. We also tell you the best places in town and in the wild — and yes, we’ll still take you if you want an astrophysicist guide.

💧 Waterfalls You Haven’t Heard Of

All the ones we love that aren’t Skógafoss or Gullfoss (even those are great, too).

🗺 Hidden Gems & Side Quests

This is Sidequest’s beating heart.
Here you’ll find:

• our favorite towns (Borgarfjöður Eystri, we promise we will. be back)
• beaches of every color
• underrated volcanoes
• science expeditions
• walking tours for hyperfixations
• the infamous Yoda cave
• a rainbow-colored natural scavenger hunt

So Why Did We Build This Guide?

Because Iceland deserves a guide that matches the way people actually travel now: Curiously. Playfully. With enthusiasm. With humor. With a willingness to wander off the map. Because travelers deserve a resource that isn’t copy-pasted from the same 10 stops on every blog.

Because you deserve to know about that café, hot pot, or weird little museum that might become your favorite memory (okay, so we did not include the Penis Museum, but you should go if you care about memories).

But mostly, we built this guide because we love this place, and we love helping people experience it in ways that feel personal, unexpected, and unforgettable. And if that means giving you 30+ pages of our favorite hikes, eats, cabins, towns, and side quests? Well… happy adventuring.

Have we sold you on the guide yet? Fill out the form and we'll send you the guide.