Iceland with Teens

Iceland | Aug 4 - Aug 9, 2019

We loved our trip planned by Preeti and KimKim. All of the day-by-day instructions were extremely helpful in navigating and getting to where we needed to be on time. Thank you so much for suggesting that the Price family go up to the lighthouse at Gardur. We met the funniest gentleman manning the lighthouse coffee shop and spend a good deal of time listening to his stories.
We weren't sure we would enjoy all of the driving along the South coast, but when we were done, we really appreciated all of the beautiful sights that we saw and were glad we did it. Everyone seemed to have a different favorite experience. Our 15 year old loved the ice cave tour with Katlatrack Adventure Tours. David was an awesome guide and great story teller. It was well worth it.
The adults enjoyed the secret lagoon. The teenagers were a little put off by the open showers, but they managed. We only spent about an hour there. The dinner at the tomato farm was liked by all of us. We all really liked the waterfalls on the first day of our trip and the Lava Tube tour was voted by the teens as most underrated tour.
Everyone loved the black-sands beach in Vik. It was very crowded but not too hard to find a place for a photo without other in the shot. The drive from Vik to Gerdi was amazing in places with the cliffs and fascinating topography,
My favorite thing was sitting on the porch of our cottage at Hesthmier Cottages and looking out over the valley at the horses and other animals. That hotel was a favorite for its location and views. It was clean and well managed. The owners were very friendly and proud of their place.
The Glacier lagoon and diamond beach were also a big hit with the teenagers. We had a lot of fun taking photos there. Unfortunately we arrived after the bathrooms were closed, so that was an issue.
The falls at Guilfoss were incredible and a must-see. We didn't get to see the Geysir because we were running low on time. We liked the national park, but the kids were tired and we had to walk quickly in order to get to our dive between the continents. For several members of our group that dive was by far the favorite thing of the trip. They loved the team at Dive.Is.
We spent some time walking around Reykjavik, but did not really enjoy the Puffin tour. We really couldn't see them since they are so small. It wasn't a long tour and the people giving the tour were wonderful, it just wasn't our thing. On the last day we really only had time to go to the Blue Lagoon. We all loved it and had fun getting face masked and laying around in the water. We had lunch at the sit-down restaurant which was fine, but very slow. We ultimately had to cancel our desserts and rush out to get to the airport.
Final thoughts: we loved the trip and would definitely recommend KimKim to anyone planning on traveling to Iceland. Our only suggestion would be that our daily plans really didn't seem to allow enough time to enjoy the stops and we ended up having to cut some stops out of our day simply because we ran out of time. The crowds at some of the places may have played a part in that and limited parking and walking areas at some of the stops made our time there longer.