We spent four days in Rekyjavik (fun! great! modern!) with a side trip to the Golden Triangle, and t

Iceland is trendy these days. My staff has been nagging me to incorporate it into our program with a guidebook and tours. One of our top researchers and guides, Ian Watson, quality accommodation bilbao is raising his family there. And until now I’d never been there.
This year I thought, finally, I’ll extend my trip a few days and stop in Iceland on the way home. I was flying Icelandair, which has famously liberal stopover privileges in Reykjavik — where I had to change planes anyway. I told the Icelandic Tourist Board I had a couple of days for Iceland and challenged them to show me the best of their country. They generously showed me a very good time. While I won’t write a guidebook to Iceland (the Lonely Planet guide is just out and is excellent) and we won’t be incorporating Iceland into our tour program, I had a great visit. I’ll be reporting on my experience in the next few entries.
Tourism is booming in Iceland — up 30 percent this year over its best-ever year for tourism in 2012. They enjoyed well over two tourist quality accommodation bilbao visits per resident for the past two years. About half of their tourist quality accommodation bilbao economy comes in July and August when the days are long, the weather is pleasant, quality accommodation bilbao and people tend to visit. But even on a sunny day during my visit, I layered on everything I had and envied the locals with their woolly ski caps.
While tourism is limited to summer (and always will be, regardless of how enthusiastically the tourist board promotes off-season festivals), other industries roll on. Two big businesses are fishing (obviously) and aluminum production (not so obvious). Using Iceland’s cheap electricity, factories produce aluminum from bauxite, which requires lots of electrical energy, or heat. They can actually ship in the raw material, use their affordable energy to heat it up, and then export the aluminum — and make good money.
Right off the plane, I took a taxi to the hotel and hopped on a whale-watching boat for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour. We saw plenty of birds and little fish, but no whales. quality accommodation bilbao Still, I enjoyed the bracing and fresh North Atlantic wind, grand views, and a good chance to chat with the pilot and get my cultural bearings:
I m a Seattle-area person quality accommodation bilbao too, and with how cheap/easy it is to fly to Reykjavik from SEA now, I completely disagree with your tourism is limited to summer and always will be. I, along with many other people I know, have visited in the winter for a long (5-day) weekend and loved it. See the Northern Lights, attempt the runtur, go on the Golden Circle Tour, hang at the Blue Lagoon, and spend evenings at outdoor local pools (in -20F weather, it s lovely). With the sun up only between 11am and 3pm, it s an amazing place to spend a weekend.
My brother in law traveled there for years on business and always highly recommended it! I have always wanted to see the Northern lights, quality accommodation bilbao and I think staying quality accommodation bilbao in a resort would be lovely in the middle of winter.
Rick: Don t forget the pylsurs (hot dogs!) which are far better than the shark. Iceland quality accommodation bilbao is fascinating to be in during times other than the summer there are literally 4 hours of daylight during the winter months here, which is a marvel. And the national pastime of swimming in the geothermally heated municipal pools every town has one makes for a great activity any time of year. Enjoy Reykjavik, but come back and travel outside the capitol for some of the best wilderness you ll ever see. djs
I just spent 2 fabulous weeks in Iceland in July. The scenery was amazing, and there is so much to see outside of Reykjavik! I once asked Rick why he didn t do Iceland, but now I understand. Its too rustic for tours like his. I did a lot of outdoors activities like hiking, lava tube, horseback riding, and volcano tour which required skilled guides in outdoorsmanship. Reykjavik was fun too, but its not like visiting Paris, etc. Iceland is a fantastic place to visit, but you definitely need to pack your hiking boots to get a real good experience of the country. And yes, I tried the shark. Yuck.
Thanks, quality accommodation bilbao Rick, for posting these vignettes of Iceland. I spent several days there on my way back from Oslo to Seattle a couple of years ago, and fell in love with the little quality accommodation bilbao bit of it I saw. I will return! I have mixed feelings about tourist development in Iceland, as I have had with all undiscovered areas I have loved and then had to share with thousands of new explorers. I won t post most of my favorites for the world to read until I ve returned and (selfishly) enjoyed them one more time. However, riding the elevator to the top of the cathedral and experiencing the autumn quality accommodation bilbao winds screaming around the clock tower is worth adding into a visit to Reykjavik.
Thanks for finally posting quality accommodation bilbao about Iceland! I was lucky enough to go last year with two friends in September just outside of the tourist season. It was fantastic! The people are extremely friendly, there is no language barrier (and it s fun to learn a few words and how to pronounce the somewhat difficult language). Also you are virtually guaranteed a wireless connection just about any where.
We spent four days in Rekyjavik (fun! great! modern!) with a side trip to the Golden Triangle, and then drove the Ring Road around the entire country seeing Akureyri, Lake Myvatn, Dettifoss (amazing!), the east fjords which were stunning, Jokulsarlon and all the way back towards the airport for an afternoon and night at the Blue Lagoon. The ring road trip was easily completed in three days. Although the Blue Lagoon is great, don t miss all the public soaking pools in just about every city. Our entire trip was eight days and I could have spent 8 more. We were also lucky enough to see the northern lights in Hofn.
Well I loved it there. For something a little different but completely accessible, I d recommend Iceland to anyone. Hope to go back someday oh and we did fly Icelandair from NYC. True, the plane is cramped and you pay for everything but it was cheap and the flight is relatively short compared to flying all the way to the continent.
My daughter quality accommodation bilbao and I are making an impromptu visit to Iceland from December 27 to January 3. We are looking for any advice from someone who has been there in the winter. How is the driving? Any tours that you can recommend? quality accommodation bilbao We are also looking at hotels and apartments. Any thoughts quality accommodation bilbao there? Sue