Best Places to Travel in August

During Iceland’s harsh winter, daylight is scarce, museums are closed, and many of its interior roads are clogged with ice and snow, closing much of the island to travelers. Summer is a different story, when days experience up to 20 hours of sunlight and routes to some of the island’s most spectacular settings—the Highlands, the Westfjords—reopen, their rolling green landscapes primed for mid-day hikes and horseback rides. Come August, bird-watching enthusiasts make a beeline for the Westman Islands, in the south, to watch adolescent puffins take flight from their cliff-side nests for the first time. And in late summer, another local pastime resumes: berry picking, when the blueberry-like wild bilberry ripens to ideal sweetness.