Reykjavik

South Iceland, Iceland

Basecamp for the wild

Vikings

Coast

About Reykjavik

Reykjavik is the world's northernmost capital and barely a city at all-a low, colourful huddle of houses under an enormous sky.

A concrete church towers over streets of corrugated-iron homes painted in defiant brights, and the air carries a faint hint of sea and sulphur. Really it's a basecamp: the Golden Circle, the Blue Lagoon and a landscape of volcanoes and waterfalls all start just beyond the ring road.

Icelanders are dryly funny and outdoorsy by necessity, and in summer the sun never quite sets.

Eat lamb soup and a notorious hot dog, then soak in a geothermal pool with the locals.

Fly to Reykjavik

Round trip from Prague, any dates in October 2026.

Nearby highlights

Þingvellir~45 min
A rift valley where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart in visible cliffs and fissures — and where the world's oldest parliament met from the year 930. Snorkel the glass-clear Silfra crack between continents.
Geysir & Gullfoss~1.5 h
The Golden Circle's double act: Strokkur erupting a 20-metre column of water every few minutes beside the original Geysir, and ten minutes on, the two-tier cascade of Gullfoss thundering into its canyon.
Blue Lagoon~50 min
The milky-blue geothermal lagoon in a black lava field: silica mud, a swim-up bar, and steam rising in any weather. Touristy and expensive — and still worth one soak. Book ahead.
Seljalandsfoss & Skógafoss~1 h 45 min
The south coast's twin waterfalls: one you can walk behind into a glowing cave of spray, the other a 60-metre curtain with a staircase beside it for the view down the coast.
Reynisfjara~2.5 h
The black-sand beach by Vík: hexagonal basalt columns stacked like a giant's organ, sea stacks said to be trolls caught by the sunrise — and sneaker waves you keep a healthy distance from.
Snæfellsnes & Kirkjufell~2 h
A peninsula nicknamed 'Iceland in miniature': lava fields, golden and black beaches, the glacier-capped volcano from Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Kirkjufell — the country's most photographed mountain.