Harbour Light & Northern Dark

Drop your bags at your central hotel and get your bearings on foot — the compact city centre is best understood by simply walking its grid of low colourful houses toward the water.

Begin at the harbour's edge with Harpa, whose tessellated glass facade shifts colour with every cloud that passes over Faxaflói Bay. Even outside of a performance, the public interior — layered mezzanines, light bouncing off geometric panels — is worth a slow wander.

A short walk along the Old Harbour quay brings you to this beloved shack. Pull up a stool, order the lobster soup or a skewer of fresh-caught fish cooked to order, and eat with salt air drifting through the door. No ceremony, just very good seafood.

Climb from the harbour up Skólavörðustígur to Reykjavik's defining silhouette. The basalt-column expressionist tower by Guðjón Samúelsson is startling up close — ride the lift to the observation deck for a panorama that stitches together everything you'll explore over two days: coast, mountains, city grid.

Head downhill to the stately lakeside building housing Iceland's national art collection. The permanent galleries move through Icelandic art from the 19th century to the present, with Nordic light — both the real kind through tall windows and the painted kind on canvas — as a constant thread.

This Baldursgata institution has been drawing locals for decades with its stone-walled intimacy and a kitchen that takes Icelandic seafood seriously. Order the fish soup to start, then follow the daily catch — whatever came in that morning is what you want.

End the evening at this legendary corner bar — unpretentious, lively, and genuinely local. After dark the coffee gives way to well-made cocktails and a crowd that spans artists, musicians, and everyone in between. Stay as long as the night allows.

Take a taxi or bus up to the hilltop dome that sits above the city on its six hot-water storage tanks. Inside Perlan, the exhibition on Iceland's geology and glaciers is genuinely fascinating — immersive ice cave, aurora simulator, and rooftop terrace views across Reykjavik and out to Snæfellsjökull on a clear morning.

A short ride back toward the centre puts you at Iceland's most comprehensive museum of history and culture. The Settlement Exhibition on the ground floor traces the Viking arrival in the 9th century; the upper galleries carry the story through to the 20th. Essential context for everything you've seen on the streets.

Return downtown for lunch at this heritage restaurant where Nordic ingredients — lamb, skyr, Arctic char — are handled with classical precision in a dining room that feels like it has always been here. A proper sit-down lunch to fuel the afternoon's coastal excursion.

Catch the short ferry from Skarfabakki pier to Viðey island, one of the oldest inhabited places in Iceland and home to Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower — a column of light beamed skyward each year on John Lennon's birthday through December. Even by day the white stone plinth and its inscription in 24 languages stops you in your tracks. Walk the island's low coastal paths before the ferry back.

Back on the harbour, warm up at this converted warehouse brewery with bay views and a rotating lineup of Icelandic craft beers. A good place to sit, watch the light fade over the water, and plan where the evening goes.

A few minutes' walk along Grandagarður brings you to this precise Japanese kitchen in the harbour's artsy warehouse district. Small plates arrive with Tokyo-level care — raw fish sourced from the same waters you've been looking at all day, transformed into something entirely different. Order the omakase if it's on offer.

On a clear night, head away from the city's orange glow — the coastal path toward Grótta lighthouse to the west or the dark stretch of shoreline east of the harbour both offer a fighting chance at seeing the aurora. Check a local forecast app before you go, dress in every layer you have, and let the sky do the rest.