Lonely Planet Iceland

Lonely Planet Iceland is a complete guide to travelling to Iceland, featuring recommendations, history, language, culture, cuisine, art and more. Lonely Planet have been producing guidebooks since 1973, winning multiple awards for their contribution towards travel, and this edition certainly follows the high standard that they have come to represent.

Other than having a detailed breakdown of each city and large town, Lonely Planet Iceland also includes categories such as ‘Understand’ and ‘Survive’ that give information on items that vary from natural wonders to public holidays. This is very useful as you can quickly find the page you’re after, with each topic set out in an easy to navigate contents page.

I particularly like the ‘Top 14’ list, which gives a brief summary of the top things to see and do in Iceland for a whirlwind tour of the country. Each entry comes with a high quality photo and one or two paragraphs detailing what you can expect.

Another very useful section for me was the ‘Getting Around’ chapter, providing information on how best to navigate your way round the country, such as whether it is better to go by train or rental car between Reykjavik and Kópavogur. This kind of information can often be difficult to find on the internet or in less detailed guidebooks, whereas Lonely Planet have you covered with this very helpful section.

One of the issues that I encountered when using the guide, however, was that it very quickly becomes out of date. Although information on the best destinations to travel to is constantly relevant and the bits on culture are unlikely to change, details on pricing in restaurants or the price of a bus ticket did not match after a few months. Therefore, as a base guide it is great, yet to get more accurate and up-to-date information, you will need access to the Internet too.

David Jones

I am a professional travel writer and travel enthusiast who traveled the world twice, so I am sharing my firsthand knowledge about everything related to travel and spending time abroad.