You know those big fat guidebooks? Totally useless when you’re traveling with small kids. Unless you run short of wipes, although even then the pages are too shiny to be truly effective. The endless listings of the latest nightclubs and little shops full of desirable and breakable trinkets just mock the parents among us, and there’s usually exactly one page on the subject of children, remarking on the local tolerance (or lack thereof) for children in restaurants, and referring you to the zoo. Cheers, thanks a lot.

Guides to Iceland get off to a good start by raving about what a kid-friendly place it is, although they also note that the many cliffs and hotsprings and geysers and waterfalls and ravines and crevasses are not always roped off -- clearly not a place for the fainthearted. In its children's section, the Footprint Guide to Reykjavík – which became my favourite for its legible maps and handy list of family activities – suggested reading Egil’s Saga, not so much for literary inspiration but for reassurance that your kids are relative angels: “Egil was a problem child who at the age of six killed another boy who was better than him at football.” With an axe. Appropriately enough, Iceland's major soft-drink manufacturer is named after this fizzy fellow. Drink up, kids!

The Footprint Guide also featured a tantalizing reference to the Reykjavík Pre-School Service, where you can leave your 2-6 year old for an hour or so of supervised play at various playgrounds around the city, for a cool ISK100 (about $2).  We never did manage to track down this Xanadu-like proposition. If we’d found it, I might have been able to use the pages of shopping information after all.

But really, someone needs to write a series of parent-focused guides to the major cities of Europe. A sort of "Friendly Planet" imprint, if you will. Sure, the spectacular Blue Lagoon is the biggest tourist attraction in Iceland, but how does it play to the under six crowd? (As it turned out, badly). Yes, the state of the art Saga Museum features, as our hostelier Thor put it, “figures made of a nylon stuff, that look exactly like humans,” but is it perchance too blood-curdling for a kindergartner? (As it turned out, hell yes). Where is the cheapest place in town to buy those damn fine diapers I wrote about last time? And where can you change them when you’re caught short? Plus, how about a map of the coolest playgrounds in town?

Luckily, we have the blogosphere. Maria from Iceland Eyes was a great resource – it was she who tipped us off to the fact that, supervised or not, it was fine to use the preschool playgrounds after hours, and that there was a nice one at the southern end of the Tjörnin. So on the evening of the first day, while Richard was off schmoozing with the scientists at the Saga Hotel, the boys and I went on a post-prandial expedition.

First we had to make the compulsory detour through Ingólfstorg square, a city square that functions as a de facto skate park, complete with ice cream stand and a hot dog vendor. Ingólfstorg is right next to the tourist information office, just down the hill from our accommodation, and thus directly on the way to and from everything. Twice a day at least, James would sail down the long ramp on his scooter, one foot extended behind him in balletic grace, aiming straight through the mysterious columns that belched geothermal steam at the far end of the square. Then he'd loop around - dodging the other scooter-kids and leather-clad bikies -- to do it all over again. Meanwhile, Toby would play with the little waterfall that ran down either side of the longest ramp. Urban design with kids in mind! Bravo, Reykjavík!

Then we set off around the lake. By now it was officially getting on for bedtime, but the boys had energy (and mac and cheese) to burn. As we scootered along the paved path, they kept an eye out for ducklings and I admired the town against the evening sky, and beyond it in the distance, the mountainous, looming Snaefellsnes peninsula. Forgive me this string of picture postcard shots, but it really was ineffably gorgeous.

Then, behind a tall fence, we saw the big preschool building and its playground. We snuck in through the gate, just like in The Secret Garden. Now this is tourism kid-style: staying up late and going down the slide a hundred times. They played in the sandpit, swung on the swings, drove the wooden train, and romped on the jungle gym, no other kids to compete with.

The climbing structure was refreshingly dangerous, but things nearly came to a sticky end when James raced down the steps and lost his footing, landing with a painful thud on his tailbone. Maternal forensic examination determined that the exceedingly narrow steps had been built with fairy-footed toddlers in mind, not the clodhoppers of hulking great nearly-six-year-olds. I was impressed that two and three year olds got to climb on an edifice that would be banned outright in most US preschools, but that didn’t soothe the bruised bottom any.

A small ginger kitten cheered us up by prancing into the playground and leaping at midges in the evening air, then wandered off down to the lake to stalk the noisy geese. As the sun ambled towards the horizon, Toby had to be pried off the slide, and then again off the springy rocking horse.

The nifty basketball hoop in the background, a common fixture in the city's preschools, appears to have been brought to you by the Icelandic Basketball Association in concert with the local dairymen’s union. Yes, indeed, mjölk er go∂! (But of course everyone knows that kökö mjölk er better).

The boys were pretty hopped up rather than worn out by the playground, so in an attempt to run James into the ground, I took us the long way home, via a full circumnavigation of the lake. He scootered along as if propelled by small invisible jet engines. Must have been all the fresh air. On our first day we'd conquered the supermarket, discovered the playgrounds, scoffed at jetlag, and mastered the map. Reykjavík was our oyster. Tomorrow we would brave the bus system and attempt to find its pearl, at least as far as the junior set was concerned: the legendary Family Fun Park, where, it was rumoured, children could Drive Real Cars...