Laugavegur

Laugavegur, the wash-road, gets its name from the springs at Laugardalur where laundresses once carried linen. Today it is Reykjavik's main pedestrian-ish street, running just over a kilometre from Hlemmur bus terminal at the east end down through Bankastraeti to Laekjartorg square. It is where locals go for design shops, wool jumpers, book shops, coffee, hot dogs and evening drinks. It carries much of the city's cultural life — bookshops, record stores, the annual Iceland Airwaves festival crowd — packed into two low-rise blocks either side. The middle stretch, roughly from Vatnsstigur down to Bankastraeti, is now car-free year-round, so summer afternoons come with buskers, spilled-out cafe tables and no engine noise, while the eastern half still takes traffic. Start at the top and walk downhill: the drop from Hlemmur to Laekjartorg is gentle but constant, and doing it the other way in a headwind is a different afternoon entirely.

Highlights for shopping include the Handknitting Association of Iceland (Skolavordustigur, a side street) for real lopapeysa jumpers, Kron for shoes, 12 Tonar for Icelandic music, and Geysir for outerwear. For food, Braud & Co bakes the country's best cinnamon buns, Reykjavik Roasters is the third-wave coffee anchor, and Baejarins Beztu Pylsur (just off the bottom of the street) serves the hot dog Bill Clinton once queued for. Bars cluster around Laugavegur 20-80: Kaldi Bar, Kaffibarinn, Slippbarinn nearby. Mal og menning at Laugavegur 18 keeps its shelves and its upstairs cafe running until 22:00, hours after every other shop has locked up, and Eymundsson at Austurstraeti 18 does the same job at the bottom of the hill. Record hunters should add Lucky Records at Raudararstigur 10, two minutes from Hlemmur, and Reykjavik Record Shop at Klapparstigur 35. If you buy one thing, make it a book or a record: they weigh nothing and cost a fraction of a jumper.

Walk the length top-to-bottom: start at Hlemmur (which has an excellent food hall), work west, cut up Skolavordustigur to Hallgrimskirkja for the view, then finish at the harbour or Tjornin pond. Shops close at 6pm sharp on weekdays; Sundays 12-5. Bars run late — Friday nights get very loud between midnight and 4am. Prices in Iceland are steep but happy hours 4-7pm can halve the cost of a beer (from around ISK1600 down to ISK900). Plan around one more closing time: Vinbudin, the state off-licence at Austurstraeti 10a, is the only place downtown selling wine or spirits and it shuts all day Sunday, so buy on Saturday if you want a bottle back at the hotel. The Bonus supermarket on Hallveigarstigur closes early evening, while the 10-11 convenience shops stay open late at roughly double the price for the same bag of crisps.

Getting here is a non-decision if you are sleeping anywhere central: almost every downtown hotel, from Center Hotels Laugavegur and Hotel Fron at the western end to Alda Hotel Reykjavik further up the hill, sits on or within three minutes of the street. From Hallgrimskirkja it is a five-minute walk down Skolavordustigur; from Harpa, about ten minutes uphill from Laekjartorg. Hlemmur at the east end is the city's main bus interchange, where most central Straeto routes converge; buy a single adult ticket through the Klappio app for roughly ISK630, because drivers carry no change. Coming from Keflavik, the Flybus and its rivals run to the BSI terminal in about 45 minutes for around ISK4000, then it is a 15-minute walk or an extra fee for hotel drop-off. Do not rent a car for this street — the car-free middle makes it pointless.

If you do arrive by car, park once and leave it. The multi-storey car parks at Tradarkot (Hverfisgata 20), Vitatorg and Stjornuport (Laugavegur 94) are the sensible options, all cheaper for a long stay than feeding a kerbside meter in zone P1, the priciest central band; check the signs, as charging hours differ by zone and Sunday rules have changed in recent years. Otherwise the street costs nothing to walk. Budget realistically: coffee ISK700-900, a bakery pastry ISK750, soup lunch ISK2500-3500, a dinner main ISK4500-7000, a hot dog around ISK700, a genuine handknitted lopapeysa from about ISK28000. Tap water is free and excellent everywhere; never buy it bottled. Spend over ISK6000 in a single shop and ask for a tax-free form — the refund at Keflavik airport is worth roughly 14 percent.

Timing changes the street completely. Before 10:00 it belongs to bakery queues and delivery vans, and that is the calmest, best-lit hour for photographs of the corrugated-iron houses. Between noon and 15:00 from June to August, cruise passengers and coach groups thicken the pedestrian section badly. Happy hour from 16:00 to 19:00 is the local rhythm; from midnight on Friday and Saturday the street becomes the runtur, loud until 04:30 and best watched from a bar rather than the pavement. By month: May to September gives long light and outdoor tables; late August brings Menningarnott, when the street shuts entirely for the city's biggest party; November brings Iceland Airwaves crowds; 23 December, Thorlaksmessa, sees the shops open late and downtown packed. January and February are dark, icy and windy — but hotel rates fall.

It suits browsers, eaters and anyone with a rainy afternoon: Hlemmur food hall, the Mal og menning cafe and Sundholl Reykjavikur, the 1937 indoor-outdoor pool on Baronsstigur five minutes off the street at around ISK1300, will absorb three wet hours between them. Teenagers do well here — streetwear, record shops, skate gear. Families should aim at Hlemmur, where the stalls handle fussy eaters and nobody minds a pushchair. Wheelchair users will find the pedestrianised middle flat and smooth, but many older shops have a single step at the door and Skolavordustigur is a genuine climb; in winter, ice makes the side streets hard work. With only an hour before a bus, do Hlemmur to Skolavordustigur to Hallgrimskirkja and stop there; the harbour end needs another half-hour you will not have.

Fold the street into a half-day with what sits around it. Hallgrimskirkja is five minutes up the rainbow-painted Skolavordustigur, its nave free to enter and the tower lift about ISK1400 for the roof-and-mountain view. Ten minutes downhill, Reykjavik Art Museum Hafnarhus on Tryggvagata holds the Erro collection, and one adult ticket also covers Kjarvalsstadir and Asmundarsafn the same day. Kolaportid flea market, Tryggvagata 19, opens weekends 11:00-17:00, costs nothing to enter and is where to try fermented shark if you must. Harpa is ten minutes from Laekjartorg, free to walk into, and the Tjornin pond with the National Gallery is eight minutes the other way. Push a further 20 minutes west along the shore and you reach the Grandi harbour district. That combination fills a full day without a bus ticket.

The honest caveats. This is a small street — 1.2 kilometres, low-rise, and you can cover it properly in two hours; visitors expecting a European shopping district are consistently underwhelmed, and if you want chain stores the answer is Kringlan mall, a short bus ride east from Hlemmur, not here. Much of the souvenir stock repeats itself, and plenty of the puffin-and-Viking merchandise is imported; the wool label matters, which is why the Handknitting Association is worth the detour off the main drag. Roadworks have chewed up sections of the street for years running and probably will again. Saturday morning brings broken glass and the smell of the night before. And do not stand on Laugavegur waiting for northern lights — the streetlights kill them; take the bus to Grotta on Seltjarnarnes instead.

Where the street genuinely rewards patience is off its own axis. The best coffee, bread and shopping sit one block up or down — Frakkastigur, Klapparstigur, Karastigur, Hverfisgata, Skolavordustigur — while Laugavegur itself carries the bars and the tourist trade. Walk the main line once for orientation, then zigzag the side streets, which is also where the price of a coffee drops. Reykjavik Roasters near Frakkastigur has queues out the door by 10:00 on Saturdays; the Hlemmur end is quieter for the same standard of cup. Free tips-based walking tours leave from Austurvollur square daily and cover the history better than any paid Laugavegur tour costing several thousand ISK. If you take one instruction from this page: go early for the buns, and come back after 16:00 for the beer.

Hours & entry

Always free to walk

Street open 24/7 · Most shops Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-17:00 · Bars until 01:00-04:30

What to see

• Hlemmur food hall — East end of Laugavegur at the bus terminal
• Rainbow street — Skolavordustigur, side street climbing to Hallgrimskirkja
• Braud & Co bakery — Frakkastigur 16, one block off Laugavegur mid-street

Tips from the ground

• Hit happy hour between 4-7pm — the appyhour.is app maps every deal in town
• Cinnamon buns at Braud & Co sell out by early afternoon on weekends
• Real lopapeysa jumpers are cheaper at the Handknitting Association than at tourist shops