We will be in Iceland for 4 nights in January. We will be renting a car. Please help us plan a driving route. How many miles is the Golden Circle? How much time should we plan for that drive? We will be staying in Rey. , so we will drive each day and back.Where else should we go? Any favorite bars, restaurants must dos? Thanks.

Good day,
The roads will be pretty tough in spots especially in January. Make sure you have a shovel, studded tires and read carefully your car rental agreement. There are guided bus tours out of Reykjavik that tour the Golden Circle. Check out the blog "I heart Reykjavik". Great site for insider tips. Good luck!

The sun doesn't rise til 11AM and sets around 4PM.

The cold and dark -- do you have experience driving in those types of conditions?

This website will give you up to date weather/road conditions

http://www.vegagerdin.is/english/roa...s-and-weather/ But it doesn't work on all browsers

i've only been to Iceland in the summer, so i don't have direct experience of driving at that time of year but given our experiences of driving in July and August, I think that in Jan I would not rent a car but do day trips from my hotel in the comfort of a bus driven by someone else.

I agree with annhig. Take day trips from your hotel. I read Iceland Review on line and recently there are articles about tourists getting rescued because of bad road conditions. And there have been bad storm conditions the last couple weeks.

When I was there in the summer we had windy conditions bad enough that we saw campers, cars, etc. blown off the road.

As you are hearing, the driving is pretty tough. We went in early March last year and the wind blew snow across the road making the roads hard to distinguish and slippery. There are often no shoulders to pull off on. We had a Ford Escape that we managed to get stuck in a drift at one point. We live on the border of
Canada and are savy winter drivers but it tested our ability!

Wow! Thank you for the great and honest replies. I guess we'll rethink driving.
Any good tour companies to recommend?

This is a small group tour. David, the owner and guide, was outstanding.

www.icelandhorizon.is

I also took some tours with this large operator and also found them to be very good.

www.re.is