City Transport
Reykjavik is easy to get around. The heart of the city is the low-lying quarter between the harbour and the lake, busy with shoppers by day and with young revellers by night. Most of the sights are within walking distance of here. Yellow city buses , operated by SVR (Straetisvagnar Reykjavikur; tel 551 2700), depart from the two main terminals : Laekjartorg (ticket office Mon-Fri 9am-6pm), at the junction of Laekjargata and Austurstraeti; and Hlemmur, at the eastern end of Laugavegur. Day services run from 7am to midnight Monday to Saturday, and from 10am to midnight on Sundays: frequencies are roughly every twenty minutes throughout the day and every thirty minutes in the evenings and at weekends; night buses run on Friday and Saturday nights only from midnight to roughly 4am. There's a flat, single-trip fare of 150kr that must be paid for with exact change; when boarding, simply throw the money into the box by the driver. Tickets are only issued if you're changing buses, in which case ask for a " skiftimidi ", valid for 45 minutes, as you pay. A strip of eight tickets, an " eitt kort ", can be bought onboard from drivers, from the terminals' ticket offices (Laekjartorg Mon-Fri 9am-6pm; Hlemmur Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat & Sun noon-6pm) or, curiously, from any of the city's swimming pools, for 1000kr. Both ticket offices have free route maps and timetables , plus the Graena Kortid pass (3900kr), which gives one month's unlimited bus travel within the Greater Reykjavik area, which covers the surrounding satellite towns, including Hafnarfjordur. Two useful routes are #5, which runs from Laekjartorg via Sudurgata to the Reykjavikurflugvollur Flugfelag Islands domestic air terminal; and #7, which goes to the Hotel Loftleidir for the Islandsflug domestic terminal from Laekjartorg via Hringbraut. If you want to see the city cheaply, bus #5 is excellent - as well as running to the airport, it also operates in the opposite direction from Laekjartorg east via the central Hverfisgata, Hlemmur and the swimming pool and campsite in Laugardalur, before swinging west to the Kringlan shopping centre; change here for route #6 to take you back into town.
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