A few days wandering Reykjavik on foot, plus a day out on the classic Golden Circle route.

We’ve just spent three days based in Reykjavik to get into the time zone before the cruise.   Between exploring the city on foot and a nine hour day trip out to the Golden Circle, there was plenty to see. 

Part One: Wandering Around Reykjavik

We did two separate walks around the city on foot, a couple of days apart — the first covering the older residential streets near Landakotskirkja, and the second taking in the street art and rainbow-painted buildings around Skólavörðustígur, finishing at Hallgrímskirkja.

Day One

This enormous mural stopped us in our tracks — a giant fist rising out of a painted Icelandic fjord, wrapping right around the corner of the building. Street art on this scale is everywhere in Reykjavik once you start looking for it.

A classic Reykjavik corrugated-iron house, painted bright red with a pale blue door and a sign reading Hlíðarhús. Half the charm of walking these streets is the patchwork of corrugated metal cladding in every colour imaginable.

A tidy green timber house with a red roof and crisp white window surrounds, sitting right on a corner crossing. These older wooden houses feel a world away from the busier streets a few blocks over.

An old schoolhouse near downtown, with a fish-scale slate tower rising over the playground.

The weathered concrete facade and carved doorway of Landakotskirkja, Reykjavik’s Catholic cathedral. The relief of Christ above the door and the wrought-iron detailing on the doors themselves are worth a closer look.

A striking granite sculpture shaped like a whale’s tail, balanced above a park path with a mustard-yellow house behind it — one of the quieter little green spaces we stumbled across.

A cheerful mural of tulips in a vase painted across a gable end, right above the FoodFusion sign. Reykjavik has a habit of turning even the plainest building end into a canvas.

A sculptural steel installation of looping, spoked rings out the front of a modern hotel — very different in style to the older architecture nearby, but a nice contrast on the same walk.

Day Three: Another Wander

Some fantastic street art murals.

The famous rainbow-painted building on Skólavörðustígur, home to KIKI Queer Bar — you can’t miss it, and frequently photographed.

The courtyard behind Kaldi Bar, with a mural of Einstein and a friend.

Hallgrímskirkja itself, its distinctive basalt-column tower rising up behind the statue of Leif Erikson. It dominates the skyline from almost anywhere in the city.

A riot of colour on a bakery frontage.

Another angle of the black-and-gold mural above the MJÚK Iceland and gelato shopfronts.

Looking straight down the rainbow-painted Skólavörðustígur towards Hallgrímskirkja in the distance — one of the most photographed streets in Reykjavik, and it’s easy to see why.

A bright red building housing Kogga keramik galleri, a ceramics gallery — a nice quiet end to the walk after all the murals and crowds around the church.

Part Two: The Golden Circle Tour

A full day out of the city on the classic Golden Circle loop — Þingvellir National Park, the Geysir geothermal area, Gullfoss waterfall, and the Kerið crater, with an Icelandic horse or two along the way.

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This glass panel in a visitor exhibit marks the tectonic plate boundary that runs straight through Iceland. I had to do the tourist thing, standing with one foot in North America and one in Europe.

Walking down into the rift valley at Þingvellir, where the North American and Eurasian plates are visibly pulling apart at a rate of 2cm a year. The site of Iceland’s original parliament, and one of the most dramatic bits of scenery on the whole route.

The path through the rift narrows here, with sheer rock walls on both sides and a steady stream of visitors filing through — it gives you a real sense of scale standing between the cliffs.

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Looking back along the boardwalk through Þingvellir, the crowds strung out along the path between the rock walls, with the wider valley and river opening up beyond.

A fast little stretch of river tumbling over black rock within the park — Þingvellir isn’t just the rift itself, there’s water everywhere once you start following the paths.

Steam rising off the ground at the Geysir geothermal field.

A quieter, misty corner of the geothermal field, wildflowers growing right up to the edge of the steaming ground.

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And here’s the main event — Strokkur erupting, sending a column of boiling water several metres into the air while everyone around the rim scrambles for a photo. It goes off roughly every five to ten minutes.

A patch of wild cranesbill growing alongside the path — easy to miss with geysers going off nearby, but a nice reminder of how green this part of Iceland gets in summer.

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Our first look at Gullfoss, the water thundering down in two broad stages into the gorge below — even in the mist and rain it’s an impressive amount of water moving fast.

A different angle on Gullfoss, taken from further along the viewing path — you get a better sense here of just how much of the river drops away into the canyon.

The Kerið crater, a collapsed volcanic cone now filled with a strikingly blue-green lake, the red and green mineral-streaked walls rising steeply around it. A quick stop but one of the most photogenic on the whole route.

One of the local Icelandic horses, famous for their thick manes and their extra gait — this one was quite happy to pose for a close-up by the roadside on the way back.