Hot springs and harbour food
“A long weekend of hot springs, harbour food and city walks.”
A long weekend built around water and weather. You keep a base in the little coloured old town and make short strikes out of it: a soak, a harbour dinner, one big loop of waterfalls and black sand. Iceland supplies the drama; you just have to show up and stay warm.
Good to know
- Best season
- June for light, winter for aurora
- Pace
- A soak, a walk, one big day out
- Where you sleep
- A design hotel in the old town
- Getting around
- On foot, plus one rental-car loop
- Length
- 4 days
- Budget
- €1,700
A soak while it snows
You start low and warm: a geothermal lagoon at dusk, shoulders under the water and steam lifting off the surface into the cold. The sky does whatever it wants overhead. You stay in until your fingertips wrinkle and any memory of the flight over has completely dissolved.
Off the boats, then a cinnamon bun
Dinner is whatever came off the boats that day, eaten at the old harbour where the whale-watching boats tie up. Afterwards you follow your nose to a bakery for a warm cinnamon bun and a coffee, then walk the harbour with it while the light refuses to fully go.
Chasing the waterfalls
One day is the loop. You point the car east and the country turns theatrical: Gullfoss folding into its canyon, geysers going off on cue, a hundred smaller falls nobody bothered to name. You stand too close, get soaked in the spray, and grin about it the whole way home.
Black sand, big weather
The loop ends at the sea, on a beach of black volcanic sand with basalt columns stacked like organ pipes and the Atlantic throwing itself ashore. It is beautiful and a little menacing; you keep well back from the waves, take the photo, and turn back toward the warm coloured town.
Make this trip yours
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