Best of Iceland Small-Group Tour

Best of Iceland is a nine-day small-group tour with Collette, flying out of Nashville on August 13, 2027 and home again on August 21. Round-trip air from Nashville International Airport (BNA) is part of the package, along with the internal flight from Akureyri back to Reykjavík, air taxes, and hotel transfers. Groups top out at 24 travelers and average about 19. The route runs from Reykjavík and the Golden Circle up onto Langjökull glacier, out along the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, and across the north to Lake Mývatn and the whale waters off Húsavík. Thirteen meals are included: seven breakfasts, one lunch, and five dinners.

August days in Iceland run long. The sun sets around half past nine in Reykjavík that week, and the evenings stay light well after dinner. You’ll use every hour of it. I’ve held a block of seats on this departure for my clients, and part of the appeal is plain logistics: it leaves from BNA. You fly out with the people you’ll spend the week with, and nobody has to cobble together their own flights to Reykjavík.

The Golden Circle comes first, and it earns the hype. At Thingvellir you walk through the rift where the North American and Eurasian plates are slowly pulling apart, on the same ground where Iceland’s parliament first met, outdoors, in the year 930. Then a geothermal bakery, where rye “lava bread” bakes slowly underground in the heat of the earth. Then Gullfoss, where the Hvítá river drops in two stages and turns hard into a narrow canyon. Strokkur, the geyser down the road, goes off every few minutes, so nobody misses it.

The next day might be my favorite on paper. You head inland to Háafell, the family farm where Jóhanna Bergmann Þorvaldsdóttir, a nurse before she was a goat farmer, has been bringing the Icelandic goat back from the edge. The breed goes back to Iceland’s first settlers, and it came very close to dying out. (Her herd also played the goats in a season four episode of Game of Thrones, if that helps.) Lunch is homemade, right there on the farm. That afternoon a mountain truck climbs onto Langjökull, Iceland’s second-largest glacier, and you walk into it through a man-made tunnel in the ice. Everything in there is blue.

People call Snæfellsnes “Iceland in miniature,” and one day there explains why. Black sand beaches. Lunch in Arnarstapi, a tiny fishing village framed by columnar basalt and sea cliffs. On a clear day, Snæfellsjökull, the glacier-capped volcano Jules Verne used as the way into Journey to the Center of the Earth. And Kirkjufell, one of the most photographed landscapes in Iceland, which you’ve probably already seen without knowing its name. From there you cross to the north, stopping at a family-owned horse farm to meet the horses and the people who raise them, and at Goðafoss, a waterfall that legend ties to Iceland’s conversion to Christianity around the year 1000.

Húsavík is the payoff. Mývatn means “midge lake,” which is fair warning in summer, and the land around it barely looks finished. At Hverir the ground steams, mud pots bubble, and the air smells of sulfur. Then a hike with your Tour Manager through Dimmuborgir, a field of strange lava formations and caves that has inspired more than one Icelandic legend. That afternoon you zip into thermal suits and head out on Skjálfandi Bay in a RIB Zodiac. Humpback and minke whales feed in the bay through the summer, and in a boat that small you’re sitting right at water level when one comes up.

I’ll be honest about the pace. Collette rates this tour a 4 on its activity scale, which means full days, a few early mornings, and a lot of walking on uneven ground that gets slick around the waterfalls and inside the glacier. Stepping down into the Zodiac takes some balance. If a three-mile walk at home is no big deal, you’ll be fine. If you use a wheelchair or a walker, this one isn’t the right fit, and I’d rather tell you now than in Reykjavík. August runs from the mid-40s to the low 60s and the weather changes by the hour, so pack layers, a proper rain shell, and an eye mask for those late sunsets.

Your last full day starts with a short flight from Akureyri back to Reykjavík. The afternoon is yours to pick: a long soak at Sky Lagoon, where the geothermal pool runs right out to the edge of the North Atlantic, or FlyOver Iceland, which sweeps you over the glaciers and fjords the coach never got to. Then one last dinner together. If Iceland has been on your someday list, August 2027 is a very good someday. Call me and I’ll hold you a seat.