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Golden Gate Park is a 412-hectare urban park on San Francisco's West Side, between the Richmond and Sunset districts and reaching to the Pacific Ocean. Laid out by William Hammond Hall on sand dunes and opened in 1870, it holds lakes, meadows and groves along with the Conservatory of Flowers, the Japanese Tea Garden and the de Young Museum.

Snæfellsjökull National Park covers 183 km² at the western tip of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, west of Ólafsvík, and was established in 2001. It is centred on Snæfellsjökull, a glacier-capped stratovolcano, and takes in lava fields, craters, sea cliffs and beaches; going onto the glacier requires a guide. Visitor centres are at Hellissandur and Malarrif.

The Legion of Honor is a fine arts museum in Lincoln Park, opened in 1924 as a gift of Alma and Adolph Spreckels and dedicated to Californians killed in the First World War. George Applegarth modelled the building on the Palais de la Légion d'honneur in Paris; it shows European art from antiquity to the 20th century, including sculpture by Rodin.

Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo stands at the mouth of the Carmel River on the southern edge of Carmel-by-the-Sea, about 7 km south of Monterey. Founded in 1770 and moved here in 1771, it was the headquarters of the Alta California missions under Junípero Serra. Restored from 1931, it keeps its original bell tower and houses museums.

Muir Woods National Monument is an old-growth coast redwood forest on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais, near Mill Valley in Marin County, about 19 km north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate. Proclaimed a national monument in 1908 on land given by William Kent and named after John Muir, it has trails and boardwalks along Redwood Creek.

The San Francisco Zoo and Gardens covers about 100 acres in the southwest corner of the city, between Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean. Founded as the Fleishhacker Zoo, with planning begun in 1929, it is owned by the city and keeps more than 1,500 animals, from giraffes and gorillas to penguins, among gardens near the ocean.

Arnarstapi is a fishing village at the foot of Stapafell on the south coast of Snæfellsnes, across the peninsula from Ólafsvík. Its basalt shore, protected since 1979, is cut by the surf into sea caves, stacks and the stone arch Gatklettur, and a 2.5 km coastal path leads from the village through the Hellnahraun lava field to Hellnar.

Búðakirkja is a small black-painted wooden church standing alone in the Búðahraun lava field on the south coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula. A church has stood at Búðir since 1703; the present one was built in 1848 at the initiative of the widow Steinunn Sveinsdóttir and restored to its original form in 1987.

Reykjanesviti is a white lighthouse with a red lantern on Bæjarfell hill at the southwestern tip of the Reykjanes peninsula. Built in 1907–1908 to designs by the Danish architect Frederik Kiørboe, it replaced Iceland's first lighthouse, lit in 1878 on nearby Valahnúkur, which earthquakes and surf had undermined.

Gunnuhver is a geothermal area of steam vents and boiling mud pools on the southwestern tip of the Reykjanes peninsula, near the Reykjanesviti lighthouse. Its largest mud pool is about 20 m across and is fed by geothermal seawater rather than fresh water; two viewing platforms look over it. Local folklore names it after the ghost of a woman called Gunna.

Kirkjufell is a 463-metre mountain on the north coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, next to the town of Grundarfjörður. It is a nunatak of layered lava and sandstone with tuff at its summit, shaped by the Ice Age glaciers around it. The Kirkjufellsfoss waterfall lies across the road, and the mountain appeared in Game of Thrones.

The Bridge Between Continents is a small footbridge over the Álfagjá fissure at Sandvík on the Reykjanes peninsula, a sand-floored rift on the boundary between the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. Built in 2002 as a symbol of the link between Europe and North America, it is also called Leif the Lucky's Bridge.

Viking World (Víkingaheimar) is a museum in Njarðvík, in the town of Reykjanesbær on the Reykjanes peninsula, opened in 2009 in a glass-fronted building by Guðmundur Jónsson. Its centrepiece is the Íslendingur, a full-size replica of the Gokstad Viking ship that sailed to North America in 2000; it hangs above the floor so visitors can walk beneath its hull.

The Blue Lagoon is a geothermal spa in a lava field on the Reykjanes peninsula, about 5 km north of Grindavík, below Mount Þorbjörn. Its milky-blue water is geothermal seawater from the neighbouring Svartsengi power station; silica gives the colour and settles as white mud on the bottom, and the bathing area averages 37–39 °C.

Dynjandi is a waterfall in Arnarfjörður in the Westfjords, about 38 km south of Ísafjörður in a straight line and much further by road. The river Dynjandisá falls about 100 m over a broad, stepped rock face that widens towards the bottom, with a stair of smaller falls below it. The falls have been a protected natural monument since 1981.

Helgafell, "holy mountain", is a 73-metre hill about 4 km south of Stykkishólmur that the settler Þórólfur Mostrarskegg held sacred, according to Eyrbyggja saga. Guðrún Ósvífursdóttir of Laxdæla saga lived and is buried at the farm below, beside a wooden church of 1903 and traces of a medieval monastery; a path climbs from her grave to the top.

Norska húsið, the Norwegian House, in Stykkishólmur was built in 1832 for the merchant Árni Thorlacius from timber cut to size in Norway, and was the first two-storey residence in Iceland. It houses the regional museum of Snæfellsnes and Hnappadalur, with rooms partly restored to their original style, an open storage in the attic and changing exhibitions.

Stykkishólmskirkja is the parish church of Stykkishólmur, a white concrete building on a rise above the town, designed by the architect Jón Haraldsson and consecrated on 6 May 1990. Its open bell tower is seen from sea and land; inside are an altarpiece of Mary with the Child by Kristín Gunnlaugsdóttir and a 22-stop Klais organ from 2012.

Seltún is a geothermal field at Krýsuvík on the Reykjanes peninsula, south-west of Lake Kleifarvatn and about 29 km south of Reykjavík. Boiling mud pots, fumaroles and hot springs colour the ground yellow, red and grey with sulphur deposits. A wooden boardwalk and gravel paths lead through the area, which lies in the Reykjanesfólkvangur reserve.

Kleifarvatn is the largest lake on the Reykjanes peninsula, about 25 km south of Reykjavík, lying on the fissure zone of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Sveifluháls and the Brennisteinsfjöll. It is up to about 97 m deep and has no visible outflow. After the earthquakes of 2000 its surface shrank by about a fifth. Road 42 runs along its western shore, with black sand beaches.