Baldursgarður

Garðskagi is a favourite spot for birdwatching, especially during spring and autumn migrations, and for sunsets that turn the sky orange and pink. On clear winter nights it is a good place to see the northern lights. A small museum and café stand by the lighthouses. Bring warm, windproof clothes, since it is almost always breezy.

The Blue Lagoon is Iceland's most famous geothermal spa, a milky turquoise pool set in a black lava field on the Reykjanes peninsula. The warm, mineral-rich water steams against the cold air, and bathers can apply silica mud masks and sip drinks from the in-water bar. The surrounding landscape is stark and otherworldly.

The two tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart at roughly two centimetres a year, and Iceland sits right where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises above the sea. The visible fissures across Reykjanes are evidence of that movement. The bridge, completed in the early 2000s, was built as a symbolic link, and it honours the explorer Leifur Eiríksson.