On our fourth full day in Iceland, our family spent the day in Seyðisfjörður, a beautiful town on the inner side of the fjord of the same name. The views are stunning, hiking is plentiful, and the food is tasty. If your family travels take you to the East Coast of Iceland, add this wonderful town to your itinerary either as an overnight stay, or as a day trip!

Previous Evening’s Arrival

As part of our road trip along Iceland’s Ring Road, our family arrived to Seyðisfjörður just before dinner, and checked into our room at the Media Luna Guesthouse. It’s not in the central part of town, but really just a 5 walk away. It had a cute room and was quite comfortable with the boys in an upper loft. When traveling with kids, we always appreciate having a door or a wall that provides some semblance of privacy. Your teens will appreciate having a break from you just as much as you will appreciate the break from them.

Technically, our room was classified as a hostel since it had a shared kitchen in addition to the regular room, but in every other way, it feels like a standard Icelandic hotel room. It also did have a washing machine and dryer, but the washing machine was broken and we were not able to use it.

For dinner we picked the Kaffi Lára El Grillo Bar, which was an excellent choice! Everyone was pleased with their meals!

Our Full Day in Seyðisfjörður

After three very busy days filled with tons of driving, we were happy to be able to get a good night sleep! As late as we woke up, we could have walked and picked up some pastries for breakfast, but we were feeling lazy and ended up eating granola bars and dry cereal that we had.

We probably did our sites in reverse, with some trial and error – the sheep path on the north side of town (which we probably didn’t start until 4pm) was the highlight of the day.

Tvísöngur Sound Sculpture

Once we finally decided to get moving, we decided to hike up to the Tvísöngur Sound Sculpture, which has stone sculptures used in Icelandic music. It is a short, but quite steep hike. Other people were wearing sneakers, but our hiking boots came in handy on the loose rock.

There were some nice views of the town and we were enjoying being out in nature.

And some streams to cross.

Eventually we made it to Tvísöngur, which had a sign advertising that they occasionally have singing competitions here. Wouldn’t that have been fun to hear!

Our plan was to continue on and loop back to town. A little past Tvísöngur, we came to a stream fed by a waterfall.

Eventually, we were unsure that we were going the right way. If we were on the correct path, there was going to be a very steep path ahead. If we were on the wrong path, we weren’t sure exactly what the correct path would be.

So, we hiked until we got a slightly better view of some of the bigger waterfalls, then decided to turn back towards town. As it turns out, this was a good choice since we enjoyed the hikes we took later in the day much more.

In Town

From the end of the trailhead, we hiked into town and stopped by the local church. It was quite cute and had wood/blue interior and a nice pipe organ in the back.

We then picked up some bakery/sandwich items from the grocery store for lunch. The boys also saw some blueberry juice, which Iceland is famous for, and some Skyr – which many people think is a yogurt, but is actually classified as a fresh sour milk cheese, for which one of the boys had seen an ad. All were quite tasty, particularly my danish-like dessert!

The Fjarðará River

After eating and resting in our hotel room for a while, we thought about where to go and decided to do the Waterfall Lane hike along the Fjarðará River.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get on the correct path and while we did get to walk along the river for a bit, eventually the path came to a dead end at someone’s driveway.

We did see some pretty birds and amazing wildflowers though!

The Playground

When we turned back, we decided to try and find the town’s playground. Most playgrounds have a big bouncy thing that appears to be a cross between a trampoline and a bouncy house. The boys had a ton of fun!

The Sheep Path

Our next plan was to do a bit of hiking around the Vestdalur Nature Reserve, but when we saw the one-lane road with two-lane traffic, we decided to turn back.

On the way we had seen a walking path sign next to the golf course, so we decided to check it out.

After consulting the back of our town map, which had the path marked in green dashes, it looked reasonable, so we decided to try it. Great choice!

It turns out the path was a bit longer than we expected, but the lush green grass, beautiful waterfalls, timid sheep who ran away any time they spotted us, and the streams we had to hop across made this the best hike of the day!

The path up the mountain was quite steep, but after a reasonably short climb, we ended up on a path that was mostly level to slightly downhill. To stay on the path, simply follow the yellow stakes that are typically spaced 20 to 50 feet apart. Remember that this is private land, so try not to venture too far off the path!

After a while we came to a pretty waterfall.

At some point we realized that the hike was going to be much longer than expected and we debated turning back. Eventually, we decided to simply continue until we reached the main road and then take that back to town.

Other than me almost getting stuck in the fence on the way out, it was a great hike! We ended up walking back into town along the road – perhaps there was another way, but it worked fine.

Fancy Sheep Truck

After walking back to town, we looked at restaurant and grocery options. We ended up deciding to try the Fancy Sheep Truck, which was well-rated online.

Other than a “15 minute wait” that turned into closer to 45 minutes, it was fabulous! With only 2 picnic tables, one of which was empty, we thought it would be super fast, but as it turns out most of their business comes as take-out phone orders. Fortunately, the views were stunning, so the wait could have been much worse.

They only had three items on their menu – a lamb burger, fish and chips, and a veggie burger, but we found both the burgers and the fish to be delicious!

For other hiking/activity ideas, visit Seyðisfjörður’s tourist website, stop by the TI, or get a town and/or hiking map. Seyðisfjörður makes an excellent travel destination!

Keep reading our travel blog for more Iceland adventures!

Here are some more posts from this trip to Iceland: