For years my dream vacation has been a location with small towns or villages, with cliffs along the ocean for miles and miles of hiking and The Faroe Islands made my dream vacation happen! As we looked up things to do and see we got super excited, the hikes and the cliffs were unreal. Once we were actually there it was still like a dream, the landscapes were some of the most beautiful I have ever seen and I have been all over the world. The Faroe Islands easily made its way to one of my top favorite places. We will definitely be coming back. As we were driving and hiking around we had no words to describe what we were seeing, we just were in awe and all we could say was wow, wow, wow!
This is probably my most detailed travel guide, because I wrote it on the plane after so it was all fresh on my mind and I want everyone to experience The Faroe Islands! Usually I write my posts years down the road to go with all of the photos.
While planning our trip The Visit Faroe Islands website was a great source for planning!
When planning each day I would recommend planning one or two main things to do. We loved taking our time at each spot and really exploring. I had originally planned to see more but I loved taking our time in each spot. It was very enjoyable.
We booked this trip on a whim, so we definitely learned a few things while we were there of how we would do it differently. We traveled in the middle of September which is their off season, which is how I prefer to travel. Usually the weather is still great just a bit colder, and there are a lot less travelers, which is what I love! With it being the off season some of the ferries were not in service or they had limited time frames. The only ferry that we really missed out on was the one to Mykines, that island looked amazing and we were sad to miss it. I tried to book a helicopter tour and had emailed someone prior to the trip and I did not receive all of the correct info. It wasn’t going to be super expensive but they don’t have round trips in the same day so we would have had to stay on the island for a night or two depending on the day that we went out. Click here for more info on that. But we had already booked our AirBNB, so we will have to do that next time. We took the ferry to Kalsoy and it was so amazing, with it being off season we only had a short window to be there but it was enough time to get to the main hike on the island and back. Make sure to arrive early for the ferry, some are super small and only have room for 15 cars.
I think it is a must to have a car on the Faroe Islands, there are definitely ways to make it work without, the buses were very reliable and easy to use. But the convenience of having your own car is worth it. Especially if you are like me and have to stop every 10 minutes to take photos of the scenery. Because we booked so close to our travel dates we kind of lost a few options for better car services. We booked ours through Avis, most of the car companies that we looked at limited your kilometers, they allowed only 100 km per day, when we booked we hoped that would be enough…. but we ran out of miles and still had a day and a half left. So, we just kept going and paid extra for the miles. I knew the car expenses would be more than we planned so I just didn’t worry about it in the end, but it added up fast and it was super expensive to drive for the 4 days that we had the car. But I didn’t want to be stopped from viewing as much as possible.
We only filled up with gas at the end, we drove just over 700 km, we put in 44 liters and it was 385.00 KR about 60 USD. Our flight left in the afternoon and we had scheduled our car to pick up in the morning, so we would have had to return it at 9 am and then have a full day in the airport, if they would have had luggage lockers I would have done that because you would be able to easily access a few hikes or towns near the airport that would be fun to walk around. But I went for the convenience and just paid for an extra day rental to keep our car longer.
There are a few other car expenses to be aware of, there are a few underwater tunnels that charge a toll, so we tried to plan things on those islands and only do them once, but we ended up having to pay those tolls a few times because we couldn’t get enough of those islands. Traveling from the island Vágar to Streymoy (200 KR about 31 USD) and Eysturoy to Bordoy (100 KR about 15 USD). We took the ferry from Klaksvík to Kalsoy and that was 200 KR about 31 USD. We had read on someone else’s blog that the ferries were cheaper, so expect a bit more on those, I am not sure what they compare to with the other ferries on the islands.
We were prepared for super cold weather, we had lots of layers packed! We brought our heavy coats and boots and did not need them during the day. We got super lucky with the weather and our last day was the only bad day while we were there. But don’t plan for that, it was nice to know that if it turned cold we would be warm. I would recommend making sure your hiking shoes are waterproof, that made all of the difference. A lot of the time you are hiking through fields and muddy hillsides. There are also a lot of water drainages coming over the trails. Most of the time when we were hiking we just went in our long sleeve shirts or just a little jacket on top, we shedded layers on every hike….. but everyone that we passed was zipped up all of the way with lots of layers, so maybe it felt like home with my Viking blood! I love cold weather hiking! The weather did change pretty fast when it did.
Travel Day:
We departed Salt Lake City at 3:30 and had the most amazing flight times and connections thanks to my mom. We had a lay over in Dallas and flew right to Reykjavik, it was only a 7 hour flight and went super fast. Our flight arrived at 9:00 in the morning in Iceland.
Day One:
We arrived from Dallas into Reykjavík Keflavik International airport at 9:00 am and then our flight to The Faroe Islands left at 6:00 pm from the Domestic Airport in Reykjavik. To get to the other airport we took FlyBus, it was easy to find at the airport and it took about an hour and a half to get to the other airport. It was about $30 per person, and a taxi was $145… I will talk about that later.
The domestic airport had luggage lockers so we locked up our stuff and walked up to Reykjavík it was a 45 minute walk to the town center. We just headed towards the giant church and found our way just fine. We loved walking around the little streets!! We were starving so we looked for a place to eat first and we had some delicious traditional Iceland fish stew at Salka Valka, it was amazing and it was 2400 ISK per plate. I found some beautiful dishes that I wanted and hoped I would be able to come back and get but our timing on things on the return didn’t work out as planned.
Don’t miss the most amazing pastry shop in Reykjavik, Sandholt, it was probably one of the most amazing danishes I have ever had the crust was so flakey and baked to perfection, topped with a delicious rhubarb jam. I am still sad we just shared it!!! We walked back to the airport and easily boarded our flight.
We arrived in Vágar at 8:00 pm and we took a taxi to our AirBNB in Argir, just out of Tórshavn. We would have rented our car that night but because of our last minute booking it was super expensive renting one that night. The taxi was 200 DKK per person, there were plenty of taxis waiting after our flight. If we would have done more research we could have taken the bus into Tórshavn and found our way from there. Most times when I travel I like to just take a taxi first thing, it helps you get familiar with the area, and not having to deal with all of your luggage on public transportation is always worth the extra cost to me.
Day Two:
We were a bit jet lagged on this day so we took the morning easy and then had to go pick up our rental car at the Vágar Airport. Our AirBNB was about a 30 minute walk to Tórshavn and the path was down to town was so perfect, it went along the prettiest river, we took this path instead of driving several times because it was so beautiful.
We road the bus from Tórshavn to Vágar and it only took 40 minutes and it was $15 per person. The bus station is right by the harbor in Tórshavn, very easy to find.
After we got our car in Vágar we went and hiked from Bour to Gasadalur. When leaving the airport make sure you have waters and snacks for your hike we thought we would come to a gas station or something before the trailhead and we didn’t, so we did the hike anyways, it would have been nice to have water. You have to go to the town before the airport to access a market or gas station, there aren’t any from the airport to Gasadalur.
The first part of the hike had the most amazing views of Bour and Vágar and you could see the incredible Dragnin Arch across the way and eventually have views of Mykines. It was a decent climb going up the first mountain, the trail switchbacked a bit, but it mostly went straight up. There were decent trail markings at the first, but with the mud and grassy paths some parts of the trail were hard to pick out, a lot of the trail looks just like the sheep trails. Once you get up the grassy mountain the trail gets a lot easier to pick out and not as steep. There are a lot of cairns to pick out your way. We only hiked to the view point of Gasadalur, because we would have had to hike back on the road to get to our car. We hiked back the same way and then drove to the cute town of Gasadalur and viewed the amazing waterfall going into the ocean. There were a lot of fun grassy trails that went along the cliffs and through the fields we enjoyed walking through them. We were there right before sunset and the light was incredible it was the perfect place to view the sunset.
We got back to our Air BNB around 9:30 pm, and then we walked back down to Tórshavn because we had a manual car and I haven’t drove stick since college and I was a bit rusty and nervous about driving around the small streets. We ate at the Tarv, right along the harbor. It was good, small portions but still good. Because we came during off season not a ton of the restaurants were open that late.
Day Three:
For breakfast we went to the local market and just bought yogurt, and bread and jam for breakfast and cheese and crackers for lunch. Groceries were pretty expensive for what we got, it was around 25 USD, the bread and jam lasted the entire time but we got a lot more yogurts throughout the trip.
We went back to Vágar to hike Sørvágsvatn and it was so amazing!!! With this hike you get two killer views. One of a waterfall going into the ocean from the lake and one where the lake is right above the ocean. It is incredible.
As we drove back we explored the towns on our way back. There are so many quaint towns, we just loved them!
I am always so weird when it comes to finding restaurants when we travel, I like to look at multiple places and like to see the menu before we decide. Most places will have it posted outside. We found the most amazing area with really small fancy restaurants. They were the cutest little houses with grass roofs, I knew we had to eat at one of them but wanted to choose the right one. So we looked at several of them. We had just got done hiking so we had hiking shoes on and our big camera bags and we were totally out of place!! I embarrassed myself! We decided to do one of those places on our last night so we could get out of our hiking clothes and look a little more presentable. It was a good choice I would have felt so uncomfortable during the dinner and I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it. We found an easy place to get a bite, and headed back home.
