The short transatlantic hop, geothermal and volcanic
Destinations › Europe › Reykjavik
Reykjavík is a capital of around 140,000 people, and the 101 downtown district — Laugavegur, Hallgrímskirkja, the old harbour, Harpa — is walkable end to end without ever needing a bus. It is also the shortest transatlantic hop from Toronto, which makes Iceland less a destination you save up for and more a stop you bolt onto a wider Europe trip.
This is the shortest transatlantic sector from Pearson. Icelandair flies YYZ–KEF nonstop and Toronto is listed as a year-round Icelandair destination; Air Canada also serves Toronto–Keflavík, but its version is listed as seasonal — so the nonstop exists, though not on both airlines in every month. Reckon on under six hours, and the usual overnight timing lands you in the morning. You arrive at Keflavík International Airport (KEF), operated by Isavia, around 50 km southwest of Reykjavík — this is not a city-adjacent airport, so plan the transfer rather than assuming a short taxi. The named link is the Flybus, which runs between the airport and BSÍ Bus Terminal in central Reykjavík, calling at Aktu taktu in Garðabær and Fjörukráin in Hafnarfjörður as well as selected hotels, guesthouses and bus stops. The cheaper option is Strætó public bus route 55, which runs via Keflavík town to BSÍ; its airport stop is a few hundred metres from the terminal, not at the arrivals door. Separately, do not confuse KEF with Reykjavík Domestic Airport (RKV), which sits within walking distance of downtown and handles internal flights to Akureyri and the regions — a domestic hop almost certainly leaves from RKV, not KEF.
The operator is Strætó, whose yellow buses cover the whole capital area (Reykjavík, Kópavogur, Hafnarfjörður, Garðabær, Mosfellsbær, Seltjarnarnes). Ticketing runs through Klapp, the Klappið app, which Strætó describes as an account-based ticketing system giving access to its city buses — and that wording is the trap. The countryside network, which includes route 55 to Keflavík Airport, is handled outside the city app system, so a city fare bought in the app will not get you to the airport; check straeto.is for how to pay on 55 before you travel. The Reykjavík City Card bundles unlimited Strætó travel within the capital area, seventeen museums and activities, eight geothermal pools (Laugardalslaug, Sundhöll Reykjavíkur and Vesturbæjarlaug among them) and the Viðey Island ferry — and it states explicitly that it does not include bus 55 to Keflavík Airport. The card is activated by you rather than at purchase, so the clock starts when you decide. Honestly, for a short stay in 101 you will mostly walk; the buses matter for Laugardalur, Perlan and the Kópavogur and Hafnarfjörður suburbs.
The concrete basalt-column church on the hill above Laugavegur is the orienting landmark of the city, and the lift up the tower gives you the whole coloured-roof grid with Mount Esja behind it. The church itself is free to enter; the tower is ticketed separately. Go on a clear day — the view is the entire point and it is wasted in low cloud.
Laugardalslaug, Sundhöll Reykjavíkur or Vesturbæjarlaug — the hot pots are where Reykjavík actually socialises, and they are open year-round in any weather. There is a strict, enforced rule: in the changing rooms you strip completely and wash thoroughly with soap, without swimwear, before you put your suit on and go out to the water. Icelandic pools run on lightly chlorinated geothermal water and depend on it, and attendants at the larger pools do watch for people skipping it. Eight city pools are covered by the Reykjavík City Card.
A short ferry out to a flat, empty island with Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower and Richard Serra's Milestones, plus walking trails and views back at the city. Get the departure point right: in summer the ferry sails from both Skarfabakki pier, out at the eastern harbour, and Ægisgarður in the old harbour downtown — but off-season sailings run at weekends only, and from Skarfabakki. Trips are free with the Reykjavík City Card. Check the current schedule before you build a morning around it.
Þingvellir, the Geysir geothermal field and Gullfoss form the standard loop out of Reykjavík, doable as a coach day trip or self-drive in a rental. Two logistics notes. Coach tours cluster at the same stops through the middle of the day, so a self-drive that starts early or runs late is a materially different experience. And in winter this is a mountain-adjacent drive: check road.is for conditions and closures and en.vedur.is for weather warnings before you set off, and be prepared to abandon the plan if the forecast turns.
The postal code locals mean when they say 101: Laugavegur and Skólavörðustígur for shopping, Hallgrímskirkja on the rise above, Tjörnin pond, Harpa on the water. Suits short stops and anyone who wants to walk to everything, because the whole centre is a twenty-minute grid. Does NOT suit light sleepers — Friday and Saturday nights on Laugavegur run very late and very loud — and Skólavörðustígur is a steady uphill that visiting parents will feel.
Officially part of Vesturbær, but its own thing: a working fishing harbour with concrete boat sheds converted into museums, studios and cafés. Suits anyone doing whale watching or boat trips, which all leave from these quays, and anyone who wants a quieter night ten minutes' walk from the bars. Does NOT suit those who mind exposure — it is flat, open waterfront and the wind here is a full grade worse than sheltered downtown.
West of the harbour: old villas, embassies, the university, and Vesturbæjarlaug, the neighbourhood pool locals will tell you is the best one. Suits travellers who want a residential, lived-in base with proper grocery shops. Does NOT suit anyone unwilling to do a twenty-to-thirty minute walk or a bus ride each way into the centre.
A wide green valley east of the centre holding Laugardalslaug — Iceland's biggest geothermal pool — plus the botanical garden and the family park and zoo. Suits families, longer stays and anyone travelling with kids who need somewhere to burn energy. Does NOT suit a two-night stopover: you will spend real time on Strætó or in taxis getting in and out, and there is no metro to speed it up.
Mostly lamb, with a snappy casing. Ask for eina með öllu, one with everything, and you get raw onion, crisp fried onion, ketchup, sweet brown pylsusinnep mustard and remoulade. Kiosks operate around the downtown streets and near the Old Harbour, and every petrol station outside town does a good one. This is the cheapest hot meal in an expensive country and Icelanders eat it unironically.
The two everyday home dishes. Plokkfiskur is mashed white fish and potato bound with butter, milk and onion, served with dark rye and butter. Kjötsúpa is a clear lamb-and-root-vegetable soup that has kept people alive here for centuries. Old-fashioned lunch counters and canteens in Miðborg do both, usually at midday only.
Wind-dried fish torn into strips and eaten with a thick smear of butter — genuinely good and full of protein. Hákarl, fermented Greenland shark, is the ammonia-scented dare. Rúgbrauð is dense dark rye traditionally steamed in the geothermal ground, sweet and cakey. Kolaportið, the flea market in the old customs house by the Old Harbour, sells all three, but it trades at weekends only.
Skyr is a strained fresh cheese, not yogurt — thicker, sourer, nearly fat-free, and sold in every supermarket in a wall of flavours. Pair it with the bakery run: kleina (a twisted fried knot), snúður (a glazed cinnamon roll with chocolate or caramel on top), and heavy grain loaves. The Laugavegur and Skólavörðustígur stretch and the residential streets of Vesturbær are thick with neighbourhood bakarí.
Take the lift up the church tower first, before anything else, for the orientation view over the coloured roofs to the harbour and across to Mount Esja. Then walk back down Skólavörðustígur, the rainbow-painted street, into the centre. Doing it in this direction means the hill is downhill, which matters if anyone in the group has knees.
Loop the Tjörnin pond, ducking into the City Hall on its edge for the enormous three-dimensional relief model of Iceland — ten minutes that make the rest of the trip make sense. The National Museum and the Settlement Exhibition, built around an excavated Viking-age longhouse, are both short flat walks from here. No bus needed; 101 Reykjavík really is that small.
Walk down Tryggvagata to the Old Harbour. If it is Saturday or Sunday, Kolaportið in the old customs house is right there. Whale-watching and puffin boats sail from these quays, and Grandi's converted fish sheds — the maritime museum, studios and food halls — are five minutes further along the quayside.
The glass dome on the wooded hill above the city, with a walk-through artificial ice cave, a planetarium show about the aurora, and a full circle observation deck. Be warned: no Strætó route stops at the door. The nearest stops leave you a real uphill walk through the Öskjuhlíð woods, so most visitors take a taxi or the operator's own shuttle from downtown.
This, not any waterfall, is the thing Icelanders actually do. Sundhöllin is the handsome 1930s indoor-and-outdoor pool right downtown, Vesturbæjarlaug is the local favourite, Laugardalslaug is the biggest with slides for kids. Strætó reaches all three. You must shower naked with soap before entering — it is signposted body part by body part, staff supervise, and there is no chlorine-heavy treatment to compensate if you skip it.
Walk the waterfront from Harpa's honeycomb glass concert hall east along Sæbraut to Sólfar, the Sun Voyager sculpture — best at low sun, which in summer means near midnight. In winter, check the aurora forecast and cloud cover on en.vedur.is before you commit to anything; a clear sky matters far more than which operator you book.
The rift valley where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart and the old open-air parliament sat, the Strokkur geyser (which erupts every few minutes — the original Geysir mostly doesn't), and a two-tier waterfall in a canyon. Be clear-eyed about transport: Iceland has no passenger railway anywhere in the country, and there is no scheduled public bus that loops these three sites. It is a rental car on Route 36 (Þingvallavegur) and Route 35, or a coach day tour with downtown hotel pickup. Nothing else works.
Seljalandsfoss, which you can walk right behind, then Skógafoss, then the black sand, basalt columns and sea stacks at Reynisfjara. A Strætó long-distance service does run from Reykjavík along the south coast through Vík, but only a handful of times a week and as a service bus that will not wait while you photograph anything — check the current route number on straeto.is, and treat a car or a day tour as the realistic choice. Reynisfjara has a green, yellow and red sneaker-wave warning light in the car park, and after a death in August 2025 the basalt columns and the Hálsanefshellir cave are closed during red warnings. At least five people died there between 2007 and 2024, plus that 2025 fatality. Obey the light and never turn your back on that water.
Moss-covered lava fields, the steaming Gunnuhver hot spring, the Bridge Between Continents, Brimketill's lava rock pool, and the Blue Lagoon itself. A Strætó route runs between the capital area and Keflavík Airport across the peninsula — check the current number on straeto.is — and the lagoon operates its own transfer coach from Reykjavík. The big caveat: this is the active eruption zone, with repeated fissure eruptions since 2021. Grindavík remains evacuated, and roads and the lagoon close at short notice. Check safetravel.is on the morning you plan to go, not the week before.
Reykjavík is small and, along the harbour and Laugavegur, mostly flat, with wide pavements and low-floor Strætó buses — a stroller is fine in the centre and the old town is not the cobbled obstacle course you get in Prague or Lisbon. The two real climbs are Skólavörðustígur up to Hallgrímskirkja and the hill up to Perlan, both avoidable by walking downhill instead. What is genuinely hard work is the absence of a rail option: there is no metro and no train anywhere in Iceland, so it is buses, walking, taxis or a rental car, and Strætó frequencies outside peak hours are thin enough that with tired grandparents you should just budget for taxis. Hlemmur, the old central bus interchange everyone's map still shows, closed in 2024 for redevelopment and the Borgarlína rapid-bus project; services were pushed out to temporary arrangements including a facility at Skúlagata, so plan in the Klapp or Strætó app rather than off a printed map. The single best thing you can do with both small children and older parents, in any weather, is the geothermal pools: every one has shallow warm hot-pots to sit in and most have slides, and they are open in driving rain. The catch is the compulsory naked soap shower before entering, which is enforced by staff and can genuinely upset a modest visiting parent — explain it at home, not at the changing room door. Winter is the honest hard season: pavements ice over, daylight is only a few hours, and it is the wind and sideways rain rather than the temperature that ruins a day. Summer is easy, but summer here still means a fleece and a proper waterproof shell. One last thing if you rent a car with family aboard — always hold the door with both hands when opening it. The wind here rips car doors back on their hinges routinely, and it is among the most common damage rental firms see.
The Icelandic króna (ISK, plural krónur). Not the euro, and not the Danish or Norwegian krone despite the similar word — Iceland is in the Schengen area but not the EU. No one accepts foreign cash. The numbers on price tags look alarmingly large; that is just the denomination, so divide before you panic.
Iceland is effectively cashless. Contactless Visa and Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay work almost everywhere, including on Strætó buses, at unattended rural petrol pumps and at paid toilets, and you can complete an entire trip without touching a banknote. Two practical warnings: some self-service fuel pumps demand a chip-and-PIN entry rather than a tap, so know the PIN on your credit card before you land, and contactless has a per-transaction ceiling above which you will be asked to insert and enter it anyway.
When a card terminal or ATM asks whether you want to be charged in Canadian dollars or krónur, always choose krónur. Choosing your home currency hands the exchange rate to the merchant or the ATM operator, and it typically runs meaningfully worse than your own bank's rate. The same offer appears at hotel checkout and at Keflavík Airport — decline it every time.
Not expected, anywhere. Service and taxes are built into the posted price, restaurants do not add a service charge, and nobody is insulted if you leave nothing. Tour guides and drivers will accept a tip for something exceptional, and card terminals sometimes offer the option, but there is no social obligation.
230 volts, 50 Hz, with Type F Schuko sockets; a two-pin Type C Europlug fits them, so a standard European adapter is all you need. An adapter changes shape only — a Canadian 120-volt-only hair tool needs a real voltage converter, whereas anything marked 100–240V runs fine. Tap water is the other headline: the cold tap is among the best drinking water on earth and buying bottled water here is faintly absurd. The hot tap, however, is geothermal, smells strongly of sulphur, and is not treated to drinking-water standard — let the cold run a few seconds until the eggy smell clears, and expect your shower to smell that way. It is harmless and it does not linger on skin or hair.
Icelandic. English is spoken universally and to a high standard, and nobody expects you to pronounce the place names. Crime is not the risk here — the risks are weather, water and roads. Check en.vedur.is for weather and wind warnings, road.is or umferdin.is for road conditions and closures, and safetravel.is for active alerts every single morning; conditions change within hours and highland F-roads are summer-only. Sneaker waves on the black sand beaches, especially Reynisfjara, have killed multiple visitors and are the country's most lethal tourist hazard. At geothermal fields, the ground beside the path can be a thin crust over boiling water, so never step over a rope.
June to August gives you the midnight sun — near-continuous daylight, the warmest weather, the highland roads and interior tours open — and also the highest prices and the fullest hotels. Late September through March is northern lights season: you need dark skies, clear conditions and a bit of luck, and the aurora and cloud forecasts on en.vedur.is are the tool locals actually use. December and January have very few usable daylight hours, which is romantic for about two days and then becomes a hard constraint on what you can see. The shoulder seasons — late April into May, and September into early October — are the honest sweet spot: aurora becomes possible from September, prices ease, and the weather is no worse than a bad summer day. Cruise traffic genuinely changes downtown: the Reykjavík season runs roughly May to September and peaks in July and August, and Faxaflóahafnir's new Vör cruise passenger terminal is now in use, so expect big call days to push crowds into the 101 core and onto the Golden Circle stops through the middle of the day. One dated note for 2026 specifically: the total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 crosses western Iceland, and Reykjavík sits inside the path of totality for barely a minute — expect accommodation across the west of the country to be extremely tight around it.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
This is the shortest transatlantic sector from Pearson. Icelandair flies YYZ–KEF nonstop and Toronto is listed as a year-round Icelandair destination; Air Canada also serves Toronto–Keflavík, but its version is listed as seasonal — so the nonstop exists, though not on both airlines in every month. Reckon on under six hours, and the usual overnight timing lands you in the morning. You arrive at Keflavík International Airport (KEF), operated by Isavia, around 50 km southwest of Reykjavík — this is not a city-adjacent airport, so plan the transfer rather than assuming a short taxi. The named link is the Flybus, which runs between the airport and BSÍ Bus Terminal in central Reykjavík, calling at Aktu taktu in Garðabær and Fjörukráin in Hafnarfjörður as well as selected hotels, guesthouses and bus stops. The cheaper option is Strætó public bus route 55, which runs via Keflavík town to BSÍ; its airport stop is a few hundred metres from the terminal, not at the arrivals door. Separately, do not confuse KEF with Reykjavík Domestic Airport (RKV), which sits within walking distance of downtown and handles internal flights to Akureyri and the regions — a domestic hop almost certainly leaves from RKV, not KEF.
The operator is Strætó, whose yellow buses cover the whole capital area (Reykjavík, Kópavogur, Hafnarfjörður, Garðabær, Mosfellsbær, Seltjarnarnes). Ticketing runs through Klapp, the Klappið app, which Strætó describes as an account-based ticketing system giving access to its city buses — and that wording is the trap. The countryside network, which includes route 55 to Keflavík Airport, is handled outside the city app system, so a city fare bought in the app will not get you to the airport; check straeto.is for how to pay on 55 before you travel. The Reykjavík City Card bundles unlimited Strætó travel within the capital area, seventeen museums and activities, eight geothermal pools (Laugardalslaug, Sundhöll Reykjavíkur and Vesturbæjarlaug among them) and the Viðey Island ferry — and it states explicitly that it does not include bus 55 to Keflavík Airport. The card is activated by you rather than at purchase, so the clock starts when you decide. Honestly, for a short stay in 101 you will mostly walk; the buses matter for Laugardalur, Perlan and the Kópavogur and Hafnarfjörður suburbs.
June to August gives you the midnight sun — near-continuous daylight, the warmest weather, the highland roads and interior tours open — and also the highest prices and the fullest hotels. Late September through March is northern lights season: you need dark skies, clear conditions and a bit of luck, and the aurora and cloud forecasts on en.vedur.is are the tool locals actually use. December and January have very few usable daylight hours, which is romantic for about two days and then becomes a hard constraint on what you can see. The shoulder seasons — late April into May, and September into early October — are the honest sweet spot: aurora becomes possible from September, prices ease, and the weather is no worse than a bad summer day. Cruise traffic genuinely changes downtown: the Reykjavík season runs roughly May to September and peaks in July and August, and Faxaflóahafnir's new Vör cruise passenger terminal is now in use, so expect big call days to push crowds into the 101 core and onto the Golden Circle stops through the middle of the day. One dated note for 2026 specifically: the total solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 crosses western Iceland, and Reykjavík sits inside the path of totality for barely a minute — expect accommodation across the west of the country to be extremely tight around it.