Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Reykjavik
Laugardalur and the coast in six hours
The hot-spring valley, the city's thermal pool, the open-air sculpture garden and the shore path back.
The three-hour route does the centre, which is small. This one walks east along the sea to Laugardalur, the valley whose hot springs washed the town's laundry until the 1930s and which now holds the largest thermal pool in the country. Swimming is not an extra here — it is the thing Icelanders actually do, it costs about the same as a coffee, and you shower naked and thoroughly first.
The route, stop by stop
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Sun Voyager
A steel ship on the shore path, and not a viking one — the sculptor called it a dream boat and an ode to the sun. Start the coast walk here.
15 min here Walk here → -
Höfði House
A small white house on the seafront where Reagan and Gorbachev met in 1986 and effectively ended the Cold War without signing anything.
20 min here Walk here → -
Laugardalslaug
Fifty-metre outdoor pool, seven hot tubs and a steam bath, heated geothermally. The social centre of the city; bring a towel or hire one.
90 min here Walk here → -
Reykjavík Botanic Garden
Five thousand species that will grow this far north, which is more than you would expect, in the same valley. Free.
40 min here Walk here → -
Ásmundarsafn
The sculptor Ásmundur Sveinsson's own domed studio-house, with his work in the garden around it, free to walk among at any hour.
45 min here Walk here → -
Kjarvalsstaðir
The city art museum's modernist pavilion at the edge of Klambratún park, holding the Kjarval collection — the painter who taught Iceland to look at its own landscape.
45 min here Walk here →
More in Reykjavik
Every walking route in Reykjavik, or the full Reykjavik guide for where to stay and what a day costs.