Three days covers Reykjavik, four if you want a day out of the city. Give the first to the centre: Hallgrimskirkja and the tower, then the Settlement Exhibition and the shore at Harpa. Day two goes to the water and the steam: a whale boat, a museum, a lagoon at sunset. Day three is the local version, which means a neighbourhood pool and the Grandi warehouses.
Reykjavik is a capital of about 140,000 people that behaves like a much larger one, because it holds everything Iceland has only one of. What makes it unlike any other European capital is what runs underneath it: the water in the taps and the radiators comes hot out of the ground.
The church on the hill is the city's compass, its facade copying the basalt columns at Svartifoss and its construction running from 1945 to 1986. The lift up the 74.5 metre tower is the only high vantage point downtown: coloured roofs below, Esja across the bay.
The one to book if you have a single evening for hot water: fifteen minutes from the centre rather than fifty, with an infinity edge that drops out of sight into the North Atlantic. The seven-step Ritual behind it runs hot, cold, sauna, mist, scrub and steam, and takes about forty-five minutes.
Half-built when the banks collapsed in 2008, and finished because stopping would have left a stump on the waterfront. Eliasson designed the facade as a honeycomb of glass that splits the light differently every hour. The public areas are free, and the box office often has mid-week tickets on the day.
A glass dome sitting on six hot-water tanks, which is the most Reykjavik sentence in this guide: the city's thermal reservoir doubles as its science museum. A man-made ice cave, a room on the retreating glaciers, and a planetarium film that is the fallback when the sky refuses to cooperate.
One building, twelve hundred years, told in order, and the single best hour before driving out of the city, because it explains what you are looking at when you get there. The objects are small and worth slowing down for. Under-18s go free.
The boats leave a ten-minute walk from the centre, which is unusual: most whale watching starts with a drive. Faxafloi bay is shallow and plankton-rich, so minke whales and white-beaked dolphins are common and humpbacks turn up through the summer. Trips run year round.
In 2001 builders on Adalstraeti hit a wall, and a layer of ash above it dated the structure to 871. The tenth-century longhouse beside it was left where it was found and a museum built around it below street level, so you walk the outline of the hall with the hearth still in the middle.
A steel boat skeleton on the shore path, and the most photographed object in the city after the church. It is usually called a Viking ship, which the artist rejected: he called it a dream boat, an ode to the sun. Best at either end of the day, as part of the walk out towards Laugarnes.
Ten minutes offshore and it feels an hour away: no cars, no shops, five kilometres of track around a flat green headland. Two artworks are why many people come, Serra's basalt columns and Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower, lit each year from 9 October to 8 December. Check the ferry timetable first.
The neighbourhood pool is the Icelandic institution no lagoon replaces, and this is the largest: a 50 metre outdoor pool kept warm all winter, hot tubs at rising temperatures, a steam room and slides. Go in the evening, when the hottest tub is the closest thing the city has to a town square.
A hot dog stand trading since 1937 and, by common consent, the cheapest good thing to eat in Iceland. Order eina med ollu, one with everything.
The Kaldi brewery's own bar on Laugavegur, pouring Czech-style beers from the north. A happy hour that is the difference between one drink and two.
Iceland's first dedicated wine bar, on a quiet lane between Laugavegur and the shore. Small enough that the person pouring will tell you what to drink.
Iceland's first art museum, opened in 1923 in the sculptor's own house beside Hallgrimskirkja. The symbolist figures are strange, and the sculpture garden is free.
A basin carved into the rock on the Seltjarnarnes shore, fed by a geothermal pipe. It sits on the darkest part of the peninsula, which is the local aurora spot.
The postcode that does the work: Laugavegur for shops and bars, Skolavordustigur climbing to the church, and the pond behind the city hall.
The working harbour that turned into the city's best afternoon: fish sheds now holding the Maritime Museum, breweries and design studios.
The west side, between the pond and the sea: the university, the National Museum, small painted houses and the pool that anchors the district.
The green valley twenty minutes east: the big pool, the botanical garden, the family park and the national stadium. The hot springs are why the pool is here.
A 230 kilometre loop of six to eight hours: Thingvellir, where the plates pull apart in plain sight, the Geysir field, and Gullfoss dropping into its canyon.
A moss-covered lava desert with steam vents and a bridge over the rift between continents. It has erupted repeatedly since 2021 and access can change at short notice.
Route 1 east to the waterfalls: Seljalandsfoss, which you can walk behind, then Skogafoss, then the black sand at Reynisfjara. The best single drive from the city.
The peninsula two hours north is Iceland in miniature: a glacier-topped volcano, a black pebble beach, fishing villages, and Kirkjufell.
Above Hveragerdi, a marked path climbs three kilometres through a steaming valley to a river warm enough to lie in. Allow three hours on foot, and check the forecast.
The main street and the spine of shopping: wool, books, records, bars and half the restaurants here. Much of it is pedestrianised in summer.
The street that climbs to the church, painted in rainbow colours, and the one to walk for design: jewellers, ceramics, knitwear and small galleries.
Iceland's flea market, in a customs warehouse by the harbour, weekends only. Hand-knitted lopapeysur at a fraction of shop prices, and a counter selling fermented shark.
Four days of light works, museum openings and pool events in the darkest part of the year, with more than 150 of them free.
The country's design festival takes over shops, studios and warehouses for four days, with open studios and a conference.
The city's oldest festival, founded in 1970: two weeks of music, theatre and visual art in Harpa and across the centre.
A week of events ending in a parade to a concert on Arnarholl, with a crowd counted in the tens of thousands in a city of 140,000.
Marathon, half, 10 km and a fun run through the city and along the shore, on the morning of Culture Night. Streets close in 101.
The city's birthday party, marking the 1786 charter: hundreds of free events, waffles on doorsteps, fireworks over the harbour.
Eleven days of independent film, with a new-directors competition and screenings that have run in a swimming pool and a cave.
The festival that introduced most of the world to Icelandic music, now in its third decade. Book beds early: the city fills.
About 50 kilometres southwest, 45 to 50 minutes by road. The Flybus meets every arrival; Straeto route 55 is cheaper and slower. A taxi is expensive enough that almost nobody takes one.
One yellow network covers the whole capital region, and a single fare buys 75 minutes including transfers. Pay in the Klappid app. Frequencies are good on the trunk routes and thin in the evenings.
A ten-minute walk from the centre, and where flights to the rest of Iceland leave from. Akureyri takes about 45 minutes. In winter, when a drive north can take a day, this is how to see the country.
Taxis are metered, expensive and not hailed on the street: order by app or take one from the ranks. A hire car earns its keep only outside the capital region.
Poached cod or haddock broken up with potato, onion and white sauce, served with dark rye and butter.
The Icelandic hot dog, made with lamb as well as pork and beef, ordered eina med ollu.
Lamb soup, and the oldest recipe still in daily use: lamb on the bone with potato, carrot and swede.
A thick cultured dairy, technically a fresh cheese and eaten here since the settlement. Served with cream.
Dense, dark, faintly sweet rye bread, traditionally baked by burying the dough near a hot spring for a day.
Smoked lamb, hung over birch, boiled and served cold in thin slices with flatbread. The Christmas centrepiece.
Cod or haddock dried in the wind until it tears into strips, eaten with salted butter.
A twisted, lightly cardamom-scented doughnut fried in fat, sold at bakery counters and eaten with coffee.
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