One Day in Reykjavík: 12 & 24 Hour Iceland Itineraries
Discover the best things to do in Reykjavík in one day in these 12 & 24-hour winter itineraries.
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Find out how to visit all the top sights in Reykjavík in just one day, including the main attractions and best day trips, tours and excursions. In this suggested itinerary, which is easily adaptable, you will discover how to get the best out of one day in Reykjavík, as well as tips, recommendations and handy information to know before you go. Whether you have 24 hours, 12 hours or less, this article will help you to plan your perfect layover or city break.
Time needed: 4-5 days.
When to go: Late November-December for the Northern Lights, snow and Christmas decorations / June-July for warmer weather.
Weather: Averages of -5°C-5°C in the Winter and 8°C-15°C in the Summer.
Language: Icelandic.
Currency: Icelandic króna.
When to go to Reykjavík
There’s not really a best time to go to Iceland – it is beautiful all year round. When to go will depend on what you want to get out of your trip. For lush greenery, full waterfalls and road-tripping, visit in Summer, when you can also experience the Midnight Sun – 24 hours of total daylight.
Or choose to visit in Winter, when Reykjavík is covered in Christmas decorations and twinkling fairy lights. The basalt landscape could have a layer of pristine snow and you may be in with a chance of seeing the Northern Lights.
We visited in mid-December and Reykjavík was decked out in Christmas decorations. We particularly enjoyed spotting all the jólasveinar (Yule Lads) – Iceland’s 13 Santa Clauses – which were projected onto buildings all over town.
Is Reykjavík expensive?
Yes. Reykjavík is apparently the sixth most expensive city in Europe, according to The Economist. But that doesn’t mean you need a lot of money to visit! In fact, if you do your research and read the tips in our articles, it’s actually relatively easy to travel Iceland on a budget.
Icelandair operates to and from destinations globally and offers really affordable fares. If you’re already planning on taking a transatlantic flight, you can add a stopover in Iceland at no additional cost to your airfare!
TUI offers very affordable, ATOL-protected packages to Reykjavík with the possibility to add excursions to famous sites, like the Golden Circle, Blue Lagoon and spotting the Northern Lights.
Is Reykjavík walkable?
Yes. Due to Reykjavík’s compact nature, it’s easy to see all the main sights in a short timeframe, with the added bonus that you can walk everywhere so don’t need to spend ages on public transport! This makes it one of the best destinations for a stopover and easy to visit in one day! Alternatively, you can join a Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour, which takes you around all the main sights with informative audio commentary. This is a good option for adventurers who are less mobile, or anyone wanting to escape walking around in the chilly winter air.
A 12 hour itinerary
08:00-10:00
To make the most of your time in Reykjavík, it’s a good idea to book a flight which arrives early in the morning. Then you need to decide how to get to Reykjavík from the airport. When you land in Iceland, it will most likely be at Iceland’s Keflavík International Airport. You can take a taxi from the airport but it’s very expensive. Pre-booking a Reykjavík airport transfer via shuttle bus is a much cheaper option. Flybus operates the Keflavík Airport – Reykjavík transfer.
Pro-tip: Take advantage of the cheaper off-peak flight prices and book your journey on an off-peak travel day, like Sunday.
If you’re staying the night in Reykjavík, you’ll want to head straight to your hotel to drop off your luggage. No one wants to explore a new place and have to lug all their bags around with them. Even if your room is not ready and you can’t check in, most hotels offer a secure holding room for your luggage.
There’s a great variety of hotels and accommodation in Iceland and there’s something for every budget. Here are a few of our favourite Reykjavík hotels:
- Budget: Student Hostel
- Quirky: Galaxy Pod Hostel
- Mid-range: The Foss Hotel
- Unique: Reykjavík Domes
- Luxury: The Reykjavík EDITION
Read next: The Thorough Guide to Reykjavík
10:00-12:00
After storing your luggage, it’s time to explore the city. The best way to see Reykjavík’s main attractions is on foot. You can use our map to follow a DIY walking tour of Reykjavík, or join a Walking Tour of Reykjavík with a Viking for a more unique experience! Guided walking tours are a fun way to orient yourself in a new city, and you’ll also learn all about Iceland’s history, myths and legends with a local. Alternatively, you can join a Folklore Walking Tour where you’ll learn about Iceland’s mythical characters, including elves, trolls and ghosts, or take a 3-hour, small-group Classic City Walking Tour.
If you’re taking your own route, we’d recommend starting with the Sculpture & Shore Walk. This seafront walk is 2km from downtown Reykjavík and provides spectacular views of the vast North Atlantic Ocean. If you’re visiting in winter, the sun will be slowly rising, casting a beautifully soft pink glow over the snowy mountains.
Stop off at the Partnership sculpture, which was given to Iceland in 1991 to celebrate 50 years of good diplomatic relationship between Iceland and the USA. There will be plenty of frozen puddles along to skate on here too.
The next stop is Sólfar (The Sun Voyager), a Viking Boat Sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason which conveys the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom. Jón Gunnar Árnason actually left a successful career as a mechanic to become an artist, before winning the 1986 competition for an outdoor sculpture for the district of Vesturbær.
From here the path winds along the seafront to Harpa – an impressive concert hall with a coloured glass façade inspired by the basalt landscape of Iceland. Harpa is the home of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Icelandic Opera and the Reykjavík Big Band. You can stop off at the café or pick up a trinket in the gift shop (which we found to be a good respite from the icy air outside!).
12:00-14:00
From Harpa it’s time to head towards the city centre. You can either go there directly or detour around Lake Tjörnin. In winter, it’s nice to do a quick loop of the lake, which is known colloquially as The Pond, and watch the locals ice skate on the frozen icy surface. If you can pluck up the courage, you can actually walk on the frozen lake. Be sure to exercise caution as icy lakes can be very dangerous. On our visit, one small corner of the lake hadn’t frozen, and was full of Reykjavík’s birdlife, including swans, ducks and geese.
If you like museums, this area of Reykjavík has quite a few to choose from:
- The National Museum of Iceland – Exhibitions and artefacts regarding Iceland’s history.
- The Iceland Phallological Museum – The world’s largest display of penises and penile parts.
- The Maritime Museum – Historic ships and exhibits on the local fishing industry, set in a former fish factory.
- Culture House – An exhibition space which houses various exhibits drawn from national museums and other cultural institutions.
You can find a full list of the 18 best museums in Reykjavík in our Thorough Travel Guide to Reykjavík
It’s about time for lunch, and Reykjavík has plenty of cafes and restaurants to choose from.
You can choose between two seafront eateries – Vagninn and Sægreifinn – both of which specialise in fresh, Icelandic seafood. While lunch spots closer to the centre of town include Kaffi Loki, Svarta Kaffið and Brauð & Co. Located opposite the Hallgrímskirkja, Kaffi Loki has some of the best food in Reykjavík, with a great view. Some of the dishes you can try here include:
- Rúgbrauð & Plokkfiskur – Rye bread with mashed fish on top.
- Kleina – an Icelandic doughnut.
- Ástarpungur – a love ball haha! Another kind of Icelandic doughnut.
- Pönnukökur – a crépe-like pancake, filled with Skyr and caramel sauce.
- And the best hot chocolate we’ve ever had in our lives.
14:00-16:00
After lunch, it’s time for some souvenir shopping. Now known as Rainbow Street due to the long multi-coloured road that leads to Hallgrímskirkja, Laugavegur is one of the oldest streets in the capital and the main shopping street. There are some really beautiful handmade crafts and little independent stores to look around. One of our favourites is Iceland Memories. This area is also full of really impressive Icelandic architecture and cool street art so it’s worth wandering around to see what you can see.
16:00-18:00
In winter, the sun begins to set between 15:00-16:00, casting a beautiful golden glow over the city. This is the perfect time to check out Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in Iceland. Designed in 1937, Hallgrímskirkja wasn’t completely finished until 1986. The church is named after pastor and poet Hallgrímur Pétursson, author of the Passíusálmar (The Passion Hymns). You can climb the bell tower, which is 74.5 metres high and boasts a viewing platform with 360° views over the entire city.
From the top, you can see rows and rows of multi-coloured houses, snowy mountains and steam rising from a geothermal plant in the distance. The church is free to look around but there is a small fee to climb the tower.
Timing your visit with dusk means you get to witness a beautiful sunset, as well as Reykjavík all lit up at night.
18:00-20:00
Now it’s dinnertime. You are spoilt for choice with restaurants in Reykjavík, from little independent cafés to 7-course tasting menus in Michelin-star restaurants.
If you’re on a budget, Svarta Kaffið is a cute and cosy restaurant that specialises in one thing: soup in a bread bowl. If you feel spoiled for choice and can’t choose where to eat, consider taking a Walking Food Tour of Reykjavík.
After dinner, you can enjoy some of Reykjavík’s many bars. Apotek has a cosy atmosphere and offers delicious and reasonably-priced cocktails (pro-tip: happy hour runs every day between 15:00-18:00 so you can save a bit if you visit a little earlier).
Discover more places to eat and drink in Reykjavík in our Thorough Guide to Reykjavík
A 24 hour itinerary
20:00+
If you’re lucky enough to have longer than 12 hours to spend in Reykjavík and don’t have to rush back to the airport, there’s still plenty left to do.
If you’re visiting in Summer you can take advantage of the solstice’s 24-hour daylight and party all night long. You can enjoy Reykjavík’s nightlife in Winter too. Apparently, Reykjavík has one of the best nightlife scenes in Europe.
Alternatively, in Winter, you can try to see the Aurora Borealis. It’s difficult to spot the elusive Northern Lights in a city – you really need to be as far away from light pollution as possible – but it’s not impossible. The best places in Reykjavík to see the lights are by the sea on the Sculpture & Shore Walk and at Perlan on the top of Öskjuhlíð hill.
That being said, we actually managed to see the Northern Lights right by Hallgrímskirkja, which is one of the most lit-up parts of the whole city! And the show we witnessed actually happened to be brighter and better than the one we’d seen on our 3-hour Northern Lights tour! Because of the light pollution and our primitive camera (you’ll have to excuse the quality of our photo), this was a rare occasion where our eyes actually saw the Aurora better than our camera could too.
Pro-tips for spotting the Northern Lights:
- Download an app to track Aurora activity and be up-to-date weather conditions.
- Look North.
- Get away from light pollution.
- Research the best equipment and settings to photograph the lights before you go.
- And if all else fails, book onto a tour with a professional.
Interactive Map of Reykjavík
Reykjavík Excursions
Speaking of Northern Lights Tours, this is probably the most popular excursion you can do from Reykjavík. If you want to explore a little further afield, or simply don’t have as much interest in the city, it’s easy to swap any part of the above itinerary with an excursion from Reykjavík.
Northern Lights Tour
There are a lot of tour company operators that offer Northern Lights Tours from Reykjavík. Some airline carriers will offer tours at a discounted rate, or you can pre-book with a local company. Our tour was included in our package with TUI. Tours can vary in length but will generally be around 3 hours long and pick you up from a departing spot in Reykjavík before taking you out of town to an area that is well away from light pollution and has a good view to the North.
The advantage of a tour is that it will be led by a professional guide, who will know what the conditions for that evening will be like and can adapt the tour to maximise your chance of seeing the Aurora. They can also provide really useful information about what to look out for and how to tell if you can see Aurora activity, as well as other information about Iceland, the landscape and the star constellations, depending on the guide.
Wrap up warm as temperatures at night plummet. If we thought we were cold during the day, boy were we wrong! It was -15°C, we were in all our layers and we were still FREEZING.
On our tour we did get to see some activity – we saw what at first appeared to be wispy silvery clouds, which began to slowly move, or ‘dance’ across the sky. It’s worth mentioning that TV really doesn’t prepare you for seeing the Aurora for the first time. Actually, our eyes are unable to detect most of the light that can be picked up by a camera shutter. And even then, most photos have to be quite heavily edited to really bring out all the colours of the Aurora. This means what you can see with the naked eye looks nothing like those pictures you see on Instagram. It doesn’t make witnessing this phenomenon any less impressive though.
Here are the best Northern Lights Tours from Reykjavík:
Land tours:
Budget: Northern Lights Bus Tour
Small group: Minibus Northern Lights Tour
Memorable: Northern Lights Photo Tour
Boat tours:
Affordable: Northern Lights Sightseeing Cruise
Luxury: Northern Lights Yacht Tour
Iceland’s Blue Lagoon
This is one of Iceland’s most iconic attractions and is located conveniently only a 40-minute drive from Reykjavík, making it an easily accessible excursion from Reykjavík. But the Blue Lagoon is actually only 20 minutes from Keflavík International Airport. To make the most of your time you can tie in a visit with your airport transfer to or from the airport. Containing 9 million litres of seawater, Iceland’s s man-made geothermal spa offers a variety of packages for every budget. The water is supplied by the nearby Svartsengi geothermal power station and is a milky blue shade as a result of the way the silica reflects sunlight. The water’s temperature is a glorious 38°C and is also rich in salts and algae.
Pro-tip: Book the first or last time slot of the day which can be surprisingly quiet!
It’s possible to park at the Blue Lagoon if you hire a car, you’ll simply need to pre-book your entry ticket. Alternatively, you can book transfers to and from Reykjavík when you buy your Blue Lagoon ticket. Or combine your Blue Lagoon experience with the Golden Circle on a small-group tour.
Book your Blue Lagoon Entry Ticket with Drink, Towel, and Mud Mask here!
Iceland’s Golden Circle
You cannot visit Iceland without getting out into the countryside and experiencing Iceland’s true, rugged landscape. Witness lava spill from a volcano, boiling water blasted into the air by a geyser and waterfalls calving out cracks in the land. Book a tour of the Golden Circle with a company for fascinating commentary, or drive yourself, enjoying going at your own pace. The Golden Circle route starts 40 minutes from Reykjavík and takes about 3 hours of driving to complete, but you’ll probably want to add a few hours for stops on the way. It’s easy to spend half a day on the tour and half a day in Reykjavík if you hire a car from the airport and do it yourself, otherwise a tour might take a ‘9-5’ approach.
Here are the best Golden Circle Tours from Reykjavík:
Basic: Golden Circle Day Tour
Classic: Golden Circle with Kerid Crater Tour
Memorable: Golden Circle and Northern Lights Tour
Popular: Golden Circle with Iceland’s Blue Lagoon Tour
Adrenaline: Golden Circle with Snowmobiling on a Glacier
Adventurous: Golden Circle and Glacier Ice Cave Tour
Bucket list: Golden Circle and Silfra Fissure snorkelling
Small-group: Golden Circle Geological Jeep Day Tour
Private: Private Golden Circle Day Tour
Read Next:
The Thorough Guide to Reykjavík
The Thorough Guide to Iceland’s Golden Circle
A Spontaneous Winter Getaway to Iceland with TUI
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