When travel advisor Martina Mizzi set sail around Iceland aboard a Silversea luxury cruise, she came chasing one small seabird and came home utterly transformed by a country that refused to be contained.
At a Glance
Iceland's remote islands and regions are most efficiently explored by cruise ship, which provides direct access to destinations like Vestmannaeyjar that would take days to reach by land. A Silversea circumnavigation reveals Iceland as an archipelago of distinct geological and cultural zones, from volcanic landscapes and geothermal fields to puffin colonies and wild-foraged coastal cuisine.
It started with puffins. Not glaciers, not geysers, not the otherworldly sweep of volcanic black sand beaches. Just puffins. When Martina Mizzi booked her circumnavigation of Iceland aboard a Silversea luxury cruise ship, her ambitions were charmingly singular. What Iceland had in store for her, however, was something far grander than she ever anticipated.
Mizzi is a travel advisor, a professional who spends her days crafting meticulously considered journeys for clients who trust her with their most precious resource: time. She knows better than most how a destination can surprise you. Yet even she was caught off guard by the sheer, breathtaking force of Iceland revealing itself, layer by layer, from the deck of a ship and across the rugged terrain of its remote islands.
A Country That Overwhelms You Before You're Ready
The first jolt came not from a puffin colony, but from the land itself. Standing before Iceland's cascading waterfalls, feeling the earth shake with the weight of water, and then moving on to the geothermal fields where steam hissed and billowed from the ground, Mizzi found herself physically overtaken by the experience. "The rush of the waterfalls, the heat of the geyser's steam, it was so exhilarating!" she recalls, her voice still carrying the charge of that memory. It is the kind of moment that rewires a person's relationship with a place, arriving wanting one specific thing and instead being claimed by something much larger.
What made those moments accessible, Mizzi is quick to point out, was the strategic brilliance of the itinerary itself. Iceland is not a country that yields easily to the conventional tourist circuit. Its most remarkable corners are separated by vast distances, challenging terrain, and geography that simply cannot be compressed into a standard land-based itinerary. "A Silversea cruise will bring you directly into remote ports which would take days to reach by land," Mizzi explains, drawing on both her personal experience and her professional instincts. For a country that is, as she discovered to her own delight, not a single landmass but an archipelago of distinct islands and regions, a ship is not merely a luxury. It is the only logical key.
The Island That History Could Not Silence
Nowhere did that insight prove more resonant than on Vestmannaeyjar, the Westman Islands, a destination that most visitors to Iceland never reach at all. The islands carry a weight of history that settles over you the moment you arrive. In 1973, a volcanic eruption tore through the main island, burying homes and streets beneath rivers of lava. Rather than abandon what they had built, the residents of Vestmannaeyjar dug out from the flows and rebuilt, choosing to remain on the island that had nearly consumed them. That particular brand of quiet, stubborn resilience lingers in the air there.
But it was a meal, of all things, that made the Westman Islands unforgettable for Mizzi. The excursion took a turn no restaurant reservation could have predicted. "We trekked with a chef who picked wild herbs and roots and he then prepared a magnificent meal with them," she says. The flavors on that plate, drawn directly from the volcanic soil and coastal scrub of the island, told the story of the place in a way that no museum exhibit could replicate. It was the kind of immersive, unrepeatable experience that only a carefully considered itinerary, built by someone who knows where to look, can produce.
And then, finally, at the end of an afternoon spent wandering those dramatic coastal cliffs, it happened. "On these islands I got to spend an afternoon among the puffins!" Mizzi says, and the delight in her voice is unmistakable. The birds she had come all this way to find were there, vivid and improbable against the green clifftops, entirely unbothered by the human who had traveled so far for the privilege of their company. The quest, it turned out, had been worth every nautical mile.
The Ship as Destination
One of the quieter revelations of the journey was the discovery that the Silversea ship itself was not merely transport between remarkable places. It was a remarkable place in its own right. Every meal aboard was, in Mizzi's word, exquisite, a standard that held firm even as the ports outside the windows offered their own extraordinary dining possibilities. The SALT Lab, Silversea's onboard culinary program, invited guests into a hands-on exploration of Icelandic cuisine, with the ship's chef guiding them through the techniques and ingredients that define the local food culture. It was, in essence, Iceland distilled and brought aboard.
The atmosphere, Mizzi is eager to clarify, never tipped into the kind of formality that can make luxury travel feel remote. "The atmosphere was warm and friendly," she notes. Silversea's reputation for refinement is well earned, but it wears that refinement lightly, making guests feel cared for rather than managed. And then there is the butler service, a detail Mizzi raises with the tone of someone who has made a decision she cannot quite believe she took this long to make. "I may not want to travel anywhere again without butler service!" she laughs. It is a line delivered with humor, but it contains a genuine truth: when travel is this seamlessly attended to, it is very difficult to go back.
An Archipelago of Surprises
What Mizzi carried home from Iceland was not just a collection of experiences but a corrected understanding of a country she thought she knew little about. She had not known, before this trip, that Iceland is an archipelago, that each island and region holds its own distinct character, its own geology, its own culture, its own flavors. The circumnavigation had not simply shown her Iceland. It had shown her how much Iceland there is to see.
"This cruise aboard the luxury Silversea ship to circumnavigate Iceland was a carefree way to experience all the best parts of Iceland," Mizzi reflects. For a travel advisor who spends enormous energy ensuring her clients feel exactly that, carefree, it is a meaningful endorsement. It is one thing to recommend a product. It is another to return from it transformed.
The Horizon Is Already Calling
For Mizzi, the journey did not end when she disembarked. If anything, Iceland accelerated something in her. She is already looking toward Antarctica, and specifically toward a Silversea itinerary that includes the option to fly over the Drake Passage, bypassing the notoriously turbulent seas that deter so many would-be polar explorers. It is a choice that speaks to the precision with which she approaches her own travel, the same precision she brings to her clients' journeys. The experience did not satisfy her wanderlust. It amplified it.
Iceland gave Martina Mizzi her puffins. It also gave her geysers and waterfalls and a volcanic island rebuilt from the lava up, a wild-foraged feast on a clifftop, and a new understanding of what it means to truly experience a country rather than simply pass through it. The puffins were always the goal. The rest of Iceland, it turns out, was the gift.
