Parking in Iceland Continued

Parking for Sightseeing 

Several of the sightseeing locations have large parking lots, Lets face it.. Iceland is one big blank canvas with LOTS of open space. There will always be enough space. The one drawback is that these parking lots may not be exactly where the sight is located. There may be a small hike or walk from a parking lot to a specific site. Take Gysir for example, there is a large parking lot, with a very cold walk in the winter out to see the magnificent site.

Inversely, some or many of the Icelandic Waterfalls have parking lots on the smaller side, but it is typically those small lots have overflow. Large buses park in the lots and smaller cars may park on the sides of the roads, which without a lot of traffic, this is not a problem. Generally, most of the waterfalls where there is some sort of bottleneck, people come and go quickly, and generally don’t spend hours at one waterfall. Even the buses are in and out within 15 minutes or so at each site ( depending on the site ).

Cost

Parking has limited cost in Iceland. Every sightseeing stop we made had free parking ( not like American sight seeing ). Parking in the City does have a cost but it is very limited. Similar to metered parking the the US there was a Kiosk in the center of the lot, you select the time you want and the spot your parked in and you reserve that spot for a certain time period. With the amount of time that you want reserved, also varies the cost. We typically would go downtown later in the evening, so there was no fees due after 10 pm (22:00). So we would arrive at 8, pay for 2 & 1/2 hours, this would cover us until 10 and carry 1/2 hour over to the next day after the lot was metered again. After putting your coins or card the machine to pay you would receive a ticket to leave on your dash. A Picture of a metered Iceland parking ticket can be seen below.

Ticket used to show purchase of parking in Reykjavik parking lots.

The typical cost for lot parking like this was a few dollars USD. In comparison, could you find parking in the middle of New York City or Washington DC for just a few dollars? I think not. We paid about 250 kr for a few hours which equates to less then $2.00 American. Alternatively there are options throughout the city for parking garage access. This type of garage is typically above ground parking, with two to three stories of available spots. The parking garage cost slightly more, and not every parking garage allows for regular short term parking in Reykjavik. A garage in Reykjavik will cost about 100ISK for the first hour and a slightly reduced fee for each additional hour, or you can choose to rent monthly. A long term rental will typically cost far less if you are a part time resident or in Iceland for an extended stay, and from research I have seen the cost to be about 6000ISK per month or $45.00 USD per month.

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