Four days in Reykjavik: a capital of 140,000 holding two thirds of a country
Three nights in the centre, almost everything on foot, one long drive east to Geysir and Gullfoss, and a hot pool on the last morning.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Reykjavík
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
Reykjavik is a city of about 140,000 people that behaves like a much larger one, mostly because two thirds of Iceland lives in and around it. The centre is a few streets of corrugated iron houses painted in colours chosen to survive nine months of grey, and you can walk from one edge of it to the other in about twenty minutes.
That compactness is the reason four days works. Two of them go on the city itself, which does not need longer, one goes east to the geyser and the waterfall that everybody comes for, and the last is a morning. Nothing in the centre needs a bus, and the drive out and back fits inside a single day without any rushing.
It is expensive, and knowing that in advance is worth more than any single tip. A restaurant dinner with a drink runs to what a good meal costs in Copenhagen or Oslo. The swimming pools, the churches, the parks and the walks along the shore are cheap or free, and they are also the parts people remember.
Highlights
- The lift up Hallgrimskirkja's tower for the whole coloured roofscape and the bay behind it
- Ruins of a 10th century longhouse, left where they were found, under a modern street corner
- Strokkur going off every few minutes, and Gullfoss dropping into its canyon a quarter of an hour away
- A geothermal pool at 09:00 with steam on the water and the whole city in it before work
Where to stay
Reykjavik, three nights
One base for the whole trip. The city sights, the harbour and the Golden Circle all work from the same room, and moving hotels for a single night out east would cost more time than it saves.
Distances inside the centre are small enough to be misleading on a map: Hallgrimskirkja to the harbour is ten minutes downhill, and the National Museum is fifteen minutes the other way.
Day by day
Day 1 in Reykjavík
Hallgrimskirkja, a hot dog and the concert hall on the water
Most flights land in the afternoon, so the first day is the hill and the harbour and nothing more ambitious. Start at the top, because the church tower is how the city's geography stops being abstract: the coloured roofs, the bay, the mountain Esja across the water, and on a clear day the ice cap far to the east.
From there it is downhill the whole way. Skolavordustigur runs from the church door to the main shopping street, and twenty minutes after that you are at the water.
- 14:00
Hallgrímskirkja
ReligiousThe concrete church on the hill, designed by Gudjon Samuelsson to echo the basalt columns that turn up all over the country and finished in 1986 after four decades of building. Entry is free, the lift up the tower is ticketed, and the queue for it is shortest first thing. The statue outside is Leif Eriksson, a gift from the United States in 1930.
- 15:30
Bæjarins beztu pylsur
EatA hot dog stand by the harbour that has been there since 1937 and still has a queue at midnight. Ask for one with everything and you get raw and crispy onions, ketchup, sweet mustard and remoulade over a lamb sausage. It costs about a tenth of what dinner will.
- 16:30
Harpa
CultureThe concert hall on the waterfront, wrapped in a honeycomb of coloured glass that changes with the light off the bay. Building it through the 2008 crash was contentious and it opened in 2011 anyway. Walking in and up the stairs costs nothing, and the foyer at dusk is the point.
- 19:00
Dinner in the centre
EatThe lanes between Laugavegur and the harbour are where to eat. Book if it is a Friday, and expect to pay for it.
With more time: With daylight left, the shore path east of the harbour runs past the Solfar sculpture and out along the sound, and the whole seafront walk carries on for miles in both directions. In winter the same hour is better spent inside the Phallological Museum, which is exactly what its name says and is funnier than it sounds.
Day 2 in Reykjavík
The settlement ruins, the National Museum and the dome on the hill
A day about how a farm on a bay turned into a country. The two museums sit fifteen minutes apart and tell the story in the right order, one starting underground with a wall built by the first people here and the other carrying it through to the present.
Finish uphill at Perlan, which is not old at all and has the best view in the city that does not involve climbing a tower.
- 09:30
871±2
CultureThe foundations of a 10th century longhouse, discovered during building work and left exactly where they were found, with the modern city built over the top. The name is the date of the volcanic ash layer underneath the wall, which pins the settlement to within a couple of years of 871.
- 11:00
National Museum of Iceland
CultureThe national collection, out by the university, running from the settlement to the twentieth century in one loop. Give it ninety minutes rather than an hour: the medieval church carvings and the section on Danish rule are what make sense of everything else you will see this week.
- 13:15
Lunch near the university
EatSoup and bread at a museum cafe is the cheap and sensible lunch here, and it is what half the room is having.
- 15:00
Perlan
OtherA glass dome sitting on top of the city's hot water tanks on the wooded hill of Oskjuhlid, with a free viewing deck running right round it. Go for the panorama first, then decide whether the exhibitions inside are worth the ticket. The walk up through the birch woods takes about half an hour from the centre.
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With more time: If the weather turns, the National Gallery on the edge of the pond is a small, calm hour of Icelandic painting, and the Punk Museum in a converted public toilet on Bankastraeti is a much shorter and much stranger one.
Day 3 in Reykjavík
Thingvellir, Geysir, Gullfoss and a crater on the way home
The Golden Circle is about 250 km of driving in a loop east of the city, and it is famous for good reason: a rift valley where the Atlantic is pulling apart, the geyser that gave every other geyser its name, and a waterfall dropping into a canyon. Leave by nine and you are back for dinner.
Go anticlockwise, so the drive out is the long one and the stops get closer together as the day goes on. Everything on this route has a car park, a marked path and a coach or two, so the trick is timing rather than navigation: the tour buses run the loop clockwise from mid morning, and half an hour either side of them changes the experience completely.
- 09:00
Drive east to Thingvellir
TravelFifty minutes out of the city on Route 36 to the rift valley where the Althing, the assembly that ran Iceland for centuries, met from the 930s. Park at the visitor centre, walk down through the Almannagja gorge with the North American plate on one side, and allow an hour on foot. The park is free; the car park is not.
- 11:45
Geysir
OtherThe geothermal field that gave the world the word geyser. The original Geysir itself is mostly dormant now, but Strokkur beside it throws water fifteen to twenty metres up every few minutes or so, reliably enough that everybody gets a photograph. Stay upwind, and keep to the paths: the ground between the vents is thin and the water comes out near boiling.
- 13:00
Gullfoss
NatureTen minutes further on, a double waterfall dropping 32 metres in two steps into a canyon on the glacier-fed Hvita. There are two viewpoints, an upper one by the car park and a lower path that takes you out along the lip. Take the lower one and expect to get wet.
- 14:15
Late lunch at Gullfoss
EatThe cafe above the falls does a lamb soup with free refills, which is the standard Icelandic road lunch and one of the few hot meals on the loop.
- 16:00
Kerið
NatureA volcanic crater on Route 35 with a red rim and a startlingly blue lake in the bottom, on the way back toward the city. A lap of the rim takes twenty minutes and there are steps down to the water. Small entry fee, small car park, and the best light of the day on it.
With more time: With more time, the greenhouse village of Fludir and the tomato farm restaurant there sit just off Route 35, and the Secret Lagoon at Fludir is a hot pool in a field with none of the polish of the big spas. Either adds about an hour to the drive home.
Day 4 in Reykjavík
A swim at Sundhollin and a last lap of the pond
Flights west leave in the afternoon and flights to Europe in the morning, so this is either a full morning or a coffee. If it is the former, spend it the way the city does.
The pool opens early, and being in outdoor water at nine on your last morning is a better memory than a souvenir shop.
- 09:00
Sundhöllin
OtherThe oldest pool in the city, a 1930s building five minutes from Hallgrimskirkja, with an indoor lap pool downstairs and hot pots on the roof terrace added later. More municipal and less resort than the big suburban complexes, which is the appeal.
- 10:45
Tjörnin
NatureThe pond in the middle of town, ringed by the parliament, the city hall and a park, and full of geese, swans and eider ducks that are used to people. Part of it stays ice free through the winter, which is why the birds stay too. A lap takes twenty minutes.
- 11:45
Last coffee before the airport bus
EatCinnamon buns and filter coffee are the local habit and most cafes will refill the cup. The airport coach wants you an hour before it leaves the terminal.
With more time: With a late flight, the Blue Lagoon and the newer Sky Lagoon are both between the city and the airport and both take bags, which is the neatest way to spend a spare afternoon on the way out. Book the slot before you leave home; neither takes walk-ins in season.
Before you go
Where to stay
Stay inside the 101 postcode, which covers the old centre from the harbour up to Hallgrimskirkja. Everything on these four days except the Golden Circle drive starts within fifteen minutes' walk of it, and the alternative is a suburb with a bus ride at both ends of the day.
Laugavegur, the main shopping street, is loud on Friday and Saturday nights in a way that carries through single glazing. A room a street or two off it costs the same and sleeps better.
Getting in and around
International flights land at Keflavik, about 50 km southwest of the city and roughly 45 minutes away on the airport coaches, which meet every arrival and drop at the terminal near the harbour with hotel transfers from there. The small airport in the city itself is for domestic flights and the Faroes and Greenland, so do not confuse the two when booking a connection.
In the centre, walk. The city bus network, Straeto, is clean and reliable and you will barely use it: it earns its keep for the pools out in the valleys and for reaching Perlan on a wet afternoon.
For the Golden Circle you want a car for the day. The roads on that loop are paved, ordinary and busy with other visitors doing the same thing, so no four wheel drive is needed in summer. In winter, check road.is before setting off and be prepared to abandon the plan: the wind rather than the snow is usually what closes things.
The pools, and how to use one
Every neighbourhood has a geothermal pool, they cost a few euros, and they are the single best thing about ordinary life here. Outdoor water at about 29 degrees, a row of hot pots getting hotter as you work along them, and locals treating the whole thing as a living room.
The rule that catches visitors is the shower. You strip completely, wash without a swimsuit, and there are attendants who will tell you if you skip it. The pools are barely chlorinated because of that, which is exactly why they feel so good.
Bring a towel or pay to hire one, and take a hat in winter. Nothing about swimming outside in the dark at four degrees makes sense until you have done it.
Money, drink and the water
Iceland runs on cards. You can spend four days here without touching a krona note, and some petrol pumps take nothing else, so bring a card with a PIN you actually remember.
Alcohol is sold through Vinbudin, the state off licence, which keeps short hours and closes on Sundays. Buying at the airport arrivals shop before you leave the terminal is what residents do and it is not a trick, just the cheapest bottle you will see.
Tap water is superb and cold water is what you drink. The hot tap smells faintly of sulphur because it comes out of the ground that way, which is harmless and takes a day to stop noticing.
When to go
June and July give you nights that never get properly dark, green ground and every road open, along with the crowds and the prices that go with it. September and October are the sweet spot: the aurora season has started, the tourist numbers have dropped and the weather has not yet turned.
Northern lights need darkness, so anything from late August to mid April is possible and nothing is guaranteed. Winter days here are short in a way that is easy to underestimate, with about four or five hours of usable light around the solstice, which is enough for one thing a day and not two.
Reykjavik rewards a slow first evening more than a packed one. The city is small, the light does most of the work, and the best hours here tend to be the unscheduled ones: a pool at dusk, a walk along the sound, a bakery at seven in the morning because it was still dark and you were awake anyway.
If you are adding days, add them outward rather than in town. The south coast starts an hour east of here and does not stop being spectacular for 400 km.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is four days enough for Reykjavik?
- For the city, three would do. The fourth day is what buys you the Golden Circle without cutting anything else, and that drive is the reason most people come. If you want the south coast waterfalls or a glacier lagoon as well, you need a week and a car, not a longer stay in the capital.
- Do I need a car?
- Only for the Golden Circle, and even then a coach tour does the same loop for roughly the same money if you would rather not drive. In the city a car is a liability: parking in 101 is metered, tight and enforced.
- Will I see the northern lights?
- Maybe, if you are here between late August and mid April, and no operator can promise otherwise. They need a dark clear night and some solar activity at the same time. Get out of the city lights, look north, and treat a sighting as luck rather than an item on the plan.
- How expensive is it really?
- Plan on a restaurant main course costing what a full meal costs in southern Europe, and beer being worse. The counterweight is that the good things are cheap: pools are a few euros, the churches and parks are free, the tap water is better than anything you can buy, and a hot dog is a legitimate dinner.
- What should I pack?
- A genuinely waterproof shell and something warm underneath it, in any month. Wind is the weather here, not temperature, and an umbrella is useless. Swimming things and a towel for the pools, and shoes you do not mind soaking at Gullfoss.
- Can I change these four days around?
- Copy it into JourneyComposer and the days arrive as an editable plan with everything already on the map, so swapping the Golden Circle for a south coast day takes a minute.