Any Reykjavik recommendations?

[princesspadam]

We’ve booked a northern lights evening tour and a blue lagoon / crater trip

anyone recommend anything? Particularly food or bars that don’t require selling a kidney on the black market to pay for it!

TIA

What kind of food were you thinking? Flatey is a nice pizza place that is not too expensive by Icelandic standards. We always enjoy Lebowski for burgers and Just Winging It for chicken wings. But these are obviously all on the fast food side!

The food halls can be really nice for a casual dinner and have a good variety to suit all tastes but they're not particularly cheap I would say. Honestly eating out is always rather expensive here.

We went to the local swimming pools, we didn't enjoy the blue lagoon experience. We went snorkeling over the tectonic plates, caving, and to the waterfalls. We were lucky, loads of snow, so went snow mobiling, glacier hiking and ice hiking.

We were lucky enough to hear a male voice choir in a service station. Beautiful singing, so i would try and find a choir to listen to.

We didn't eat out, so no advice about that! We self catered, and took excellent flasks to take hot chocolate and coffee out with us.

Hire a car and get out of town to see glaciers, ice caps, waterfalls, glacial lagoons, black sand beaches, beautiful valleys, hot springs, and atmospheric flood plains.

We're in Reykjavik right now for our last night after a wonderful week touring the golden circle and south coast. DH has planned us a walk around the top city sights for tomorrow morning just before we head to the airport ... the walk is a 45 minute round trip ...nuff said! 😁

The Penis Museum!! Even the bar in there has dildoes on the pumps as handles. Well worth a visit.

Fish and chips! There used to be a really good van on the harbour by the viking ship sculpture. The vans often do a lamb stew and bread as well which is good and cheap.

Icelandic Street Food (restaurant) is comparatively reasonable - endless refills too 😊

We loved the Sky Lagoon - got the bus there.

Have a brilliant time! Can’t wait to go back.

We did a food tour which was great and included lots of history and interesting facts. Didn’t bother with blue lagoon as so long to get to but went here https://www.skylagoon.com/ which you can get a bus to and from included in the ticket

Thank you, so far we have done a food hall (excellent), and booked the penis museum for today

we did the secret lagoon instead of the blue lagoon and enjoyed that but might give the sky lagoon a whirl

Oh can I jump on and ask whether it’s a good trip with DC? Mine are 11 and 8. We’re not a hugely adventurous family with travelling abroad so I am a bit nervous, planning a visit between Xmas and New Year.

Children enjoy the pools and some of the museums but there's not otherwise a lot that is specifically aimed at them. It's down to your children's personalities and interests. Are they outdoorsy? Do they appreciate beautiful scenery? Are they interested in things like volcanoes or vikings? Do they like hiking? Are they likely to deal well with bad weather and long drives?

At that time of year the weather will likely be horrible and it's incredibly dark, just a few hours of half light. If you come I'd strongly recommend a summer or autumn trip instead. New Year's Eve is really something if you like fireworks though.

I have an 11 and 9 year old and I think my younger one might enjoy a trip to Iceland if he wasn't Icelandic, but my older one would not be into it 😅

Highly recommend the public swimming pools. We liked the smaller on but the big one with all the plunge pools is fun.

Reykjavik Fish Restaurant facing the harbour was lovely. Reasonably priced (for Iceland), good views and food was lovely.

As a previous poster mentioned, Lebowski is good for burgers and reasonably priced for Reykjavik but I wouldn't say anywhere is 'cheap' unfortunately.

Keep an eye out for happy hour in the bars where the drinks are reduced from astronomical prices down to just outrageous prices. There is an app that tells you which bars happy hour is at what time so you can move around to take advantage of this.

Reykjavik is amazing if you ignore the cost. Have a great time.

Laugarás Lagoon is wonderful- with an amazing restaurant as well.
Apótek Kitchen do a fantastic brunch selection, very reasonable,as long as you stick to the Mimosas/soft drinks, or go to the cute cafe area for macarons etc.
DC adored 'Volcano' in the basement of Harpa, where there is lots to see, with free admission and includes Hljóòhimnar is a free sound world for DC.