Welcome to Part Two of our Reykjavik adventure. Today, we will tell you our experience with the Reykjavik City Card. These cards come in 24, 48, or 72 hour blocks. We chose the 72 hour card to cover the duration of our stay.
The first thing to know about these cards is you must exchange your voucher for the actual card at one of the specified locations. For us, The Settlement Exhibition was the most convenient place to pick up our physical card. Once you have the physical card, you can ride on any Reykjavik bus, you can go to any of the Reykjavik swimming pools, take the ferry to Viðey Island, visit museums and galleries, and get discounts around the city, and more.
Our first stop was The Settlement Center, and we highly recommend it. Inside, you can view the actual archaeological ruins of a 10th Century Viking longhouse. I loved how child friendly this museum was, also. Games, hands-on exhibits, arts and crafts, and other imaginative and interactive exhibits were throughout the museum.
We also went to the House of Collections on our visit. It was a very rainy day, and the museum was quiet, contemplative, and a perfect way to spend an hour. The museum is multi-levels, and the building itself is beautiful. The artwork was provocative, and we enjoyed the stories of Iceland that it told.
As I said above, you can also take the bus around town for free with your city card. And, you can visit the seven Reykjavik swimming pools for free. I feel I must reiterate that if you do go swimming, you must take a cleansing shower, totally naked, getting all the stinky parts, before you enter the pool. No one will care what you look like. No one will care about anything except that you get clean before entering the public pool. The public pools require you to put your phones in the lockers and do not take pictures. But, they have great facilities with cold spas, hot spas, swimming areas, steam rooms, waterslides, areas for kids, and more.
So, if you’re on a budget and want to get a feel for the culture of Reykjavik, we highly recommend the city card. I think it was a great value for us, and it gave us options we may not have considered without it. If you want to do some aurora tours or whale watching, it also provides you with percentages off of those tickets through various operators. If you can’t get out of Reykjavik, the card’s bus and ferry privileges will grant you a lot of freedom to see some of the city besides the five blocks in the heart of downtown.
Happy Adventuring!