Iceland

Iceland’s landscape is the reason to go, and the scale of it is hard to picture until you’re standing in it. We hiked Sólheimajökull Glacier with Icelandic Mountain Guides — neither of us had real hiking experience, and they still got us out onto ice cliffs taller than the Statue of Liberty. We went whale watching with Elding Tours in the dead of winter, which in hindsight we’d think twice about — the cold and the seasickness are real — but Elding’s whale-friendly guidelines made it worth it. The Blue Lagoon is the reason we booked the trip at all: we saw a photo of it on Pinterest, and two days later we had plane tickets.

Reykjavik’s food scene is sharper than you’d expect from a city this size. The Grill Market pairs Icelandic ingredients with Asian technique — mink whale sashimi with a Thai dipping sauce, dried fish tempura — sourced from farmers the kitchen works with directly. Kolabrautin, a modern Italian restaurant on the top floor of Harpa, Reykjavik’s LED-lit concert hall on the waterfront, serves dinner with a view over the whole city. At the Blue Lagoon itself, Lava Restaurant is built into the lava cliff over the water, run by Viktor Örn Andrésson, the 2014 Nordic Chef of the Year.