We went to Reykjavik to meet up with two people who were disembarking from a cruise in the city, with the plan to stay in town as our base of stay for visiting other places in the region.

I was surprised that many of the other people on our traveling companions’ cruise effectively left Reykjavik right away to return home. Why? Did they not think they’d have much to see in the tiny town (which is nevertheless the largest in the country)?

Don’t make that mistake. If you fly into the Reykjavik area (or get dropped in Reykjavik by your cruise operator), don’t consider it solely a waystation for elsewhere. The city has a lot to offer and a lot to love.

The great news is that you do not need a car if you plan to visit Reykjavik and some of the sites in the area. The city is very walkable and most of the nearby attractions offer transportation to and from Reykjavik for a fee.

If your travel will take you to Reykjavik, here are a few of my suggestions on what to do, see, and eat while in town.

Drop into the Reykjavik Tourist Office

Anyone who reads my travel posts knows I always recommend a stop at the city’s local tourist office early in the trip.

Though Reykjavik doesn’t officially have a physical tourist office, as far as I could tell, a corporation called What’s On has two offices in central Reykjavik that can answer any questions you have, guide you on what to do based on your interests, and give you options for what’s happening while you’re in town. After all, a lot of things that happen on a temporal basis—shows, festivals, parades, and so on—are never in guidebooks.

Take a Guided Walking Tour of the City Center

I’m a walking tour devotee. I rarely go anywhere, even for a short visit, without seeking a walking tour to take in any short open windows I have.

You’ll find several tour operators to choose from in Reykjavik. We went with CityWalk Reykjavik after a bit of research and were happy with our spirited and entertaining guide and the well organized and well-balanced tour that covered the highlights of Reykjavik’s history and culture.

CityWalk Reykjavik offers a free tour of the city center (tips appreciated, of course), but I recommend the more in-depth experienced offered by the small-group tour, which does have a fee. If you really want a private experience, they’ll organize a tour for just your group as well.

Get the Background at the National Museum of Iceland

I had blocked several hours to peruse the National Museum of Iceland, but I didn’t need that much time.

This lovely and very reasonably sized museum concisely and clearly walks visitors through the history of the Iceland from its first human settlers through to the present day. Even the most history-loving visitor (read: me) needs only an hour and a half to maybe two hours for a visit.

My favorite section covered the island at the time of its first settlers through to its adoption of Christianity in the early Middle Ages. My runner-up favorite addressed the island’s independence from Norway at the time of the Second World War.

The history of the island really surprised me. So much of it is so very different from the history of other parts of greater Europe.

Highly, highly recommended.

Learn about Seafaring Iceland at the Reykjavik Maritime Museum

The Reykjavik Maritime Museum covers the history of fishing in Iceland. As anyone could imagine even without visiting Iceland—much less this museum—the history of the island is tied closely to the waters that surround it, which have served to feed the residents and to provide an economic powerhouse for hundreds of years.

This museum speaks to the past and present of fishing in Iceland, including how the country today addresses issues with environmental changes and fishing’s sustainability.

You won’t need an extensive amount of time to thoroughly visit Reykjavik’s maritime museum. If you don’t have much interest in boats and fishing and maritime industries, you may want to skip it—but given how intrinsically Iceland’s history connects to the oceans, stopping in could help you gain context on the island you would otherwise miss.

Visit the Penis Museum (Maybe)

I would have happily skipped the Icelandic Phallogical Museum. I’d read in several places that the museum doesn’t have much of interest or value (and serves more than anything to attract tourists). However, when on travel with others, one often must compromise—and so to the penis museum we went.

As it turned out, the person most eager to go to the penis museum was the first to get bored and leave for the museum café to wait out the rest of us.

Now, I love museums, if you can’t tell, so I wandered carefully around this one seeking a tidbit of value. I didn’t, however, find much other than the curious news that some obscure musicians (and Jimi Hendrix) once agreed to have an artist take molds of their equipment for an art project. The artist’s point for the project, though, missed me entirely.

Otherwise, what you’ll find in the penis museum is room after room of different animal penises preserved in jars of formaldehyde. Yep.

Take a Whale Watching Tour

If you do have or could have issues with seasickness, you may not want to take one of the several whale-watching tours that leave from Reykjavik to take people out to waters where they are likeliest to see whales and dolphins.

And if you have issues and decide to go anyway—because you’re in Iceland, and I get that—take the seasickness medications on offer as you board the boat.

Seriously.

As I get sicker than sick in even the most smooth-riding car on a nonstop highway, I passed on the whale-watching tour while the rest of my group went without me. While I worried that I had skipped it for no reason, my traveling companies quickly assuaged my fears when, only half an hour after the boat pulled away from the dock, I started to receive reports of people leaning over the rails. By the halfway mark, they said, more than half the group hung over the sides, ejecting the contents of their stomachs.

But! No one in my group had any issues with seasickness, and they absolutely loved the experience. They saw almost every type of whale the company said they might see and took dozens (maybe even hundreds?) of photos.

After doing a lot of research and vetting, we chose to book the whale watching experience with Elding. Because the boats used for the classic whale watching tour had a heated salon in case people needed breaks from the outdoor cold, that’s the option we picked.

Float in the Blue Lagoon

I’m a cold-natured human, so the prospect of stripping down to my bathing suit in even a relatively warm season in Iceland—even just to quickly pop into warm water—didn’t exactly entice me.

However, when in Iceland, one is supposed to do the whole hot-pool thing. And so we did.

Blue Lagoon has a pretty extensive marketing effort going on, which means it’s the option best known by tourists to Reykjavik—though you have several similar options also nearby. (Note: Though we had already booked at Blue Lagoon because, well, marketing, someone local told me that the options in town give a more authentic experience and cost significantly less.)

If we’d had more time in Reykjavik, I would have loved to go to another of the warm pools in addition to Blue Lagoon, to see the contrast. The Blue Lagoon was indeed tourist-packed (with selfie-taking galore). Nevertheless, we had a lovely experience and even the skeptics among us enjoyed it. (I promise you that I was not the only skeptic in our group!)

You need to book in advance to select a time slot for your visit. When you do, you choose between several different packages and have several different options for add-ons, including face masks and massages and beyond. While reserving on-line, you can also book reservations for one of the two restaurants on site, though the lobby has a seating area where you can eat food you’ve brought or that you’ve bought from the Blue Lagoon take-away café.

We chose the basic package for our pool experience and booked a late lunch at the one restaurant that still had availability, Lava Table. Honestly, though the Blue Lagoon’s other restaurant has a Michelin star, I have trouble imagining that we would have had a better experience or meal at that restaurant than what we enjoyed. Our meal at Lava Table was delicious and delightful from the three courses we each ate (turns out floating works up an appetite!) through to the attentive service.

Oh, and if you’re cold-natured like me, you may be disappointed to discover that the water in the lagoon is only moderately warm, with patches of warmer. However! Those among you who worry about the water being too hot have nothing to fear.

Eat at Our Favorite Restaurant Finds

Heading into our trip to Iceland, I did not expect much when it came to dining while there.

I can’t say why, exactly, but the weird (and, I now believe, sensational) stories about the island’s traditional foods that you find when researching a visit likely played a role.

So color me pink with surprise when we found several restaurants in Reykjavik that we loved:

• Fish House: Someone recommended this restaurant to us before our visit, so I made reservations. Don’t let the unassuming façade fool you when it comes to Fish House: The food is absolutely excellent. I’d call this a can’t-miss.

• Mama: I tend to go to vegetarian restaurants solo, as traveling companions (including my spouse) can turn their noses up at the suggestion. Fortunately, my husband said he’d join me for a visit to Mama, and we were both glad he did. This dining experience was my hands-down favorite in Reykjavik. The warm and cozy dining space, the overall mood of the place and the patrons, and the incredible food had us even ordering seconds of a couple of dishes for the taste and the ambience. (No kidding!)

• Oto: This restaurant serves modern food across either a series of shared plates—you can even ask for the tasting menu for your table—or main dishes, if preferred. As you’d expect from a restaurant fusing Japanese and Icelandic food, the menu leans heavily toward seafood and the dishes are light and innovative.

Reykjavik Will Surprise You

If you end up with the opportunity to visit Iceland, don’t consider Reykjavik a place to pass through on your way home or to somewhere else on the island. Stay a few days and really enjoy it.

We barely scratched the surface of all the things to do and to see and to eat and to experience while there. You’ll find so much to discover!

And if your plans involve seeing the region around Reykjavik, I’ve written up our experiences on three day trips to see Iceland from Reykjavik.