Reykjavik, Iceland

December 2025

First Thoughts

It seems a natural conclusion for this blog to come back to the same place that it started – Iceland. This time, I was going with a friend from university, who suggested the idea, and I figured he hadn’t considered both the temperature and limits in terms of daylight by going on the winter solstice and the three days following. After we paid our deposits, I realised that he hadn’t considered it at all.

Anyway, after considerable planning and re-planning, the trip came around, and I found myself thinking about two previous trips in 2022, my first trip to Iceland, and my trip to Berlin, which had been for a similar length of time, around the same time of the year.

Day One

Day one began with us meeting in Manchester Airport – or at least attempting to, as my friend and I spent a good amount of time following each other’s WhatsApp locations around on our phones to realise that we were on different floors from one another. Once we met up, we headed straight through security and into Manchester Airport’s Duty-Free area, sampling a drink each before boarding our plane.

The plane was a smooth and straightforward two-hour journey, and despite notice of a potential Aurora Borealis (Northern lights) we didn’t see them. It was interesting to be able to spot the curvature of the Earth due to the dimly lit far-flung horizon, something I was certain that I’d not seen before from a plane. We landed in Iceland’s only international airport, Keflavik, and disembarked smoothly and efficiently from the aeroplane. Everything seemed easy enough. It was once we had gotten to the arrivals exit that our problems began to arise.

Once we got the exit, we were met by a ticking clock on a screen until the next departure of a Flybus; the bus system which carts Icelandic tourists directly between the airport and their hotels in Reykjavik. We first attempted to buy tickets, but the machines swallowed our money and did not provide a refund. Once refunded, we bought our tickets from a person instead, which worked. Then we went into the small Co-Op/Tesco Express-esque shop in the airport exit area, with a small handful of meal deal items came to £24. Then we pondered a little longer, heading out of the airport in measly weather to see our Flybus set off in front of us. No worries, said my friend, there’ll be another one in a few minutes.

Back inside the airport, we asked the lady on the Flybus stall when the next bus would depart, and she said that it would be forty minutes after the next plane landed…which was in another one hundred minutes. We settled in for our hundred-and-forty-minute wait and eventually took ourselves off for a walk around the outside of Keflavik Airport in horrendous wind and rain, swinging by the hotel bar of Aurora Hotel for our first Icelandic drink. Eventually, we boarded the second Flybus and made our way to Reykjavik, marvelling at the simple but impressive Icelandic Christmas decorations and the fact that even the apartment blocks were pretty quick. We changed from the Flybus onto a smaller shuttle, which then took us directly to our hotel. We checked into our hotel, called Cabin Hotel, just before midnight, heading straight to bed.

Images:

- Top left: Myself arriving at Manchester Airport

- Top right: Myself and my friend setting off on the plane from Manchester Airport

- Bottom left: Exit to Iceland sign inside Keflavik Airport

- Bottom right: Drink in Aurora Hotel lobby

Day Two

Day Two was our day to see the main attractions of Iceland, and after breakfast in the hotel bar, we made a quick stop off at our nearest Kronan, a series of supermarkets found across Iceland similar to Morrisons or Tesco’s. We used these Kronans to help keep our food costs down, buying one meal a day from them. My lunch: a sandwich, a salad box, a banana and a cereal bar came to a measly £16!

From the Kronan we walked up into the city centre, starting at the very impressive Hallgrimskirkja Church, the largest church in the country. It was very windy by this point; the church is situated at the top of the hill that Reykjavik is built around. We rode the lift up to the bell tower, and between the blasts of wind, we were able to take in the stunning views of the city. We headed down from Hallgrimskirkja down Skolavordustigur, the main high street of Reykjavik. We stopped off in Kattakaffhisud, the cat café, where we were served some excellent cake and coffee, witnessed children wake some very angry cats (despite a sign saying ‘don’t play with the cats when they are sleeping’) and got talking to some Americans, one of whom divulged that they were in fact allergic to cats.

In the early afternoon, we headed down to the shopping area of Reykjavik, heading past Stjórnarráðshúsið, the Prime Minister's Office, which was understated and accessible in comparison to any British government building. We stopped for a wet outdoor lunch in Austurvoller, a small square just to the south of the high street. This was also home to Reykjavik’s main Christmas markets, which seemed to consist of about ten stalls. We dropped by Iceland’s Phallalogical (Penis) Museum, a museum dedicated to the male genitalia, and displayed a vast collection of animal penises. The museum was brief, and whilst we were entertained, it did leave us thinking “why is this here?”.

We then visited a small but interesting Iceland-VR experience, called SagaVR, before continuing our search for a Christmas market. Our search took us to Harpa, Iceland’s largest event and conference centre. It turned out not to have any Christmas markets, although it did have a shop where you could buy real fur hats for only £350. After this, we headed back out into the shopping area, having a fantastic curry at Funky Bhangra Curry House, before swinging past two of Reykjavik’s top bars, Prikid Ehf and Islenski Barinn. In the latter, we enjoyed a supper of Puffin on Pancakes with our drinks – a meal which left me with mixed feelings, as although it was nice to try, Puffins are Vulnerable globally, and Red Listed in the UK. After these drinks and supper, we headed back to Cabin Hotel.

Images:

- Top left: Hotel Cabin on the first morning

- Top right: Myself and my friend outside Hallgrimskirkja

- Bottom left: Stjórnarráðshúsið, the Prime Minister's Office

- Bottom right: My friend outside Harpa Conference Centre

Day Three

Day three began with a little impromptu trip out to Laugardalslaug – Iceland’s largest swimming pool. The indoor pool was closed off for training, so we swam in the larger, outdoor pool, which, at around ten in the morning, meant it was still dark. The mix of cold air, a dark sky and a warm pool made for a rare sensory mix, with my friend refusing to leave the jacuzzi at the edge of the pool due to the air temperature. I swam a few lengths of the main 50m pool before we headed out and on with the main activity of the day.

We quickly swung back by the hotel before heading on to catch a bus into the city’s harbour area, as the sun eventually rose around 11 am. I found the bus system to be efficient and well-managed, certainly compared to back in the UK, where buses barely ever ran on time and then would often smell and sound as if they were about to break down any second. Our first stop was another Kronan, before we boarded the Elding Whale Watching tour boat Eldey, and set off on our three-hour whale watching tour. The sea was choppy, and the weather was cold, so my friend went back inside due to the choppiness of the waves. I was more affected by the cold, my hands going numb despite having huge, thick mittens on.

On our way out of the harbour, I spoke to the tour guide about the huge mountain on the headland north of Reykjavik, which he told me was called Esja, geographically located in a way that blocked Reykjavik from the harshest of Iceland’s weather. During our tour, we spotted a few things: seagulls, two seals, a porpoise tail and a dolphin tail, but alas, no Whales. Feeling a little short-changed, once we were back on dry land, we headed to The Whales of Iceland Museum, which contained large foam models of various Whale species, and included interesting information about the species you would be most likely to find off the coast of Iceland in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Our day ended at Kopar, a fine dining Icelandic restaurant situated on the harbour where we had taken the whale-watching boat from. We treated ourselves to their three-course Seafood menu (which didn’t include Whale or Puffin) and a couple of glasses of wine each. While this was one of the finest meals I’d ever eaten, it did come with an eye-watering price tag, something I’d noticed a lot in Reykjavik. After the meal, we had a drink in Rontgen, an old-fashioned multi-storey bar, before we headed back to Cabin Hotel.

Images:

- Top left: Laugardalslaug Swimming Pool entrance

- Top right: Elding Whale Watching Tour boat (not the one we went on)

- Bottom left: Myself at the Whales of Iceland Museum

- Bottom right: Dinner at Kopar restaurant

Day Four

The fourth and final day began with us checking out of Cabin Hotel, and hauling all our luggage onto a bus, heading across the city to our final destination of the trip, Sky Lagoon. This involved heading out of Reykjavik and into neighbouring Kopavogur (technically its own place, but attached to Reykjavik). In Kopavogur, we got off the bus and walked through an industrial estate to our destination, the fact that we were still in darkness giving the area a palpable atmosphere. Suddenly, we turned a corner, and we found ourselves at Sky Lagoon.

Sky Lagoon, like the more famous Blue Lagoon, is a geothermally heated hot spring, which is now souped up into a tourist attraction. We got changed and headed in, the water very warm, clear and smelly (I remember that from my previous trip to Iceland). The Sky Lagoon overlooked the stormy Atlantic Ocean, but the lagoon itself was calm and serene. The wrist bands we were given also allowed us to build up a tab at the lagoon-side bar, as people swam back and forth across the lagoon with glasses of wine and pints of beer in their hands. As part of our package trip to the Lagoon, we had a one-use-only access to the ‘seven-step ritual’.

This seven-step ritual involved two saunas, a steam room and a wet room (which was just like standing outside in the UK). Whilst not much of a sauna aficionado (all my times in a sauna have been whilst on holiday) I have to say that it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. We spent a few hours bobbing about in the Lagoon before we got out and had a late lunch from the café attached to the Lagoon. From there, we dried off, avoided the Sky Lagoon shop, and took a Flybus back to Reykjavik’s main bus terminal, then changed for another one which took us on the forty-five-minute journey to Keflavik Airport.

Our flight back to the UK was a lot less painful than the one there, with no unnecessary waits in either airport. We took an Uber to the spot where my car was parked, and then I drove each of us back to our respective homes in time for Christmas morning.

Images:

- Top left: Sky Lagoon entrance way

- Top right: Sky Lagoon

- Bottom left: Myself and my friend in Sky Lagoon

- Bottom right: Arrival back at Manchester Airport

Final Thoughts

This trip was lowkey and short, a quick little getaway fitted into the gap between finishing my first teaching job and Christmas. It had a packed itinerary, with both of us keen to see as much as we could in the time; however, it felt stress-free. Our plan to have a ‘Reykjavik city break’ rather than a whistle-stop tour of Iceland, as it could have been, paid off. It feels as if Reykjavik is a place where it is almost impossible to be stressed.

I will admit this trip was not entirely positive – the tourist tax and the prices of general amenities such as food are off-puttingly high. The prices of some of the tourist attractions do seem disproportionately high at times, too. Those costs do take some of the romance out of any trip to the area. On the other hand, Iceland is a country that I love, both for its natural landscapes and its endearing way of life. I constantly feel that the Nordic countries have more in common with my own country, the UK, than us British sometimes realise, and are countries that we could learn from enormously.

The trip has left me wanting to see yet more of Iceland, and I know that one day, maybe years from now, I will return.

Useful Links

ewww.visiticeland.com/ - Iceland's official travel website
https://guidetoiceland.is/ - Guide to Iceland transport website
www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/iceland - Travel advice for Iceland
https://visitreykjavik.is/ - Visit Reykjavik official website
https://hotelcabin.is/en/- Hotel Cabin's official website