Iceland Dateline - May 2007

Spring brings with it warm weather, long days, budding plants and a generally pleasant disposition from people wherever you go. Icelandair has decided to drop prices on some of the best deals going if you book soon. Read on for deals you can put together yourself, packages where the airline does the planning for you, and one very special tour that just might put you face-to-face with an elf.

Icelandair Discounts Summer Tickets

Icelandair is looking to save you money when you decide to fly to Iceland this summer. The airline is offering $75 - $150 per person off on select Icelandair Holidays packages for travel July 1 through Aug 19, 2007, and from $50 to $150 off per person for May (if booked by May 15), and July and August (if booked by May 31). Start planning your Iceland vacation with Build-Your-Own, Nature, Adventure and Lifestyle package options. Then customize your trip with Iceland Add-ons. Or head to London, Paris and more on a European Vacation, where you can add an Iceland Stopover for up to seven nights at no additional airfare.
Click here for details.

Air Deals To Airwaves

Icelandair is offering discounts to the best party in Reykjavik with their Iceland Airwaves Event package. Hear the hottest bands from Iceland, Scandinavia, the U.K. and the States in Iceland’s capital city. Venues are all in the downtown area, so you can hop from one performance to the next. Book by May 31 and take off $50 per person. Expand your Airwaves experience and add in extra nights from as little as $49 per person per night.
Click here for details.

See The Hidden Worlds of Iceland

Ghosts, elves and trolls - the Icelandic supernatural environment makes it sound like the real Middle Earth. Icelanders have as many stories and superstitions as you care to delve into, and we have just the deal to let travelers do just that. Visit areas close to Reykjavik and in South Iceland where both ancient and modern encounters have taken place between Icelanders and the "hidden folk." You’ll also enjoy the opportunity to get to know Iceland’s nature and culture better with a horseback riding tour, a guided Hidden Worlds Walking tour in Hafnarfjordur, a Visit to the Ghost and Elf and Troll Centers, and the newly opened Northern Lights room. From $799* per person based on double occupancy. Click here for details.

*Prices quoted are exclusive of applicable taxes and official charges by destination of approximately $100-$180, per person including the Sept. 11th Security Fee of $2.50 per U.S. enplanement.

ONLY HAVE THREE DAYS TO TAKE OFF?

If you have only three days to visit, no problem. We can handle it. We suggest that you spend at least one day in the capital city of Reykjavik. It’s essential to take a swim in one of our excellent thermal pools, visit some of the interesting museums found in Reykjavik and take a stroll downtown. The ideal way to explore the city is to purchase the
“Reykjavik Tourist Card,” available at the Tourist Info Centre.
On the second day, why not take one of the many Day Tours and Excursions available out of town. You can choose from a wide range of Bus Tours and Jeep Safaris. Some “classics” are the “Golden Circle Tour” and the “South Coast Tour.”


On the third day we suggest that you spend the morning shopping around, either on Laugavegur shopping street or in one of the malls. The perfect way to spend the afternoon is to visit the Blue Lagoon and possibly make a reservation for a special massage available there. (For more information: www.icelandtouristboard.com).

70 REASONS WE LOVE ICELAND

Our friends at Icelandair were sitting around one day eating 70th anniversary birthday cake – for a young independent nation, we’ve got a pretty experienced airline. Anyway, employees there obviously had a bit too much time on their hands as they prepared a list of 70 things to see and do during a trip to Iceland.

Our favorites? How about no. 6, a salt scrub at the Hotel Nordica. Or no. 33: buy a new Icelandic fishing card which gives you access to 23 trout fishing lakes around the country.

No. 36 : Drive a jeep through the surf on South Beach, Iceland. Afterwards, enjoy a stroll on the black sand beaches.

No. 56: Go hiking on the easy walking trails in Thingvellir National Park. Have your picture taken standing on the mid-Atlantic ridge to prove you can indeed be in two places at one time (Europe and America).
Our personal favorite is no. 56: Sip scotch over thousand-year-old glacial ice. We’ll drink to that!

You can see the entire list at: http://www.icelandair.com/70ideas/

SILFUR RESTAURANT IS HOT

The Silfur Restaurant, located at the Hotel Borg in Reykjavik, and its chef, Steinn Oskar Sigurdsson, were just awarded a Hot Table award by Condé Nast Traveller. This makes them one of the 95 best new restaurants in the world. Silfur opened in the summer of 2006 and has since established itself as one of the best restaurants in Iceland. With a new age Art Deco interior and beautiful design, Silfur gives you the experience of supreme surroundings that are a mix of Icelandic lava, natural stone and fire. The world has a lot of restaurants; being named one of the best has made us as happy as elves. For more information: www.silfur.is.

WEB WATCH

If you’re a true Icelandophile, you’ll want to set your Web browser’s home page to the new IcelandTouristBoard.com Web site (it’s easy – look under “Preferences”).

Log on to watch Iceland videos, download free Iceland music, browse the latest news, and read (get ready, here comes a gratuitous plug for us) Dateline Iceland newsletter. You can also download and order the Iceland Tourist Board brochure, find tour operators offering Iceland vacations, and locate a warm bed anytime of the year.

Our favorite new feature is the Iceland Google map. It’s a mash-up of Iceland’s places of interest on top of an Iceland Google satellite map. Thanks to Google you can zoom into multiple Iceland travel destinations and get an up-close bird’s-eye view. (For more information: www.icelandtouristboard.com; you can see the new map feature at http://www.goiceland.org/page.php?22)

GLOBAL WARMING?

Maybe they’re just resigned to the fact that global warming is real, but some folks in Iceland are enjoying the weather nonetheless. Temperatures hit new records across Iceland in April.
In Ásbyrgi National Park in northeast Iceland, the temperature went up to 23°C (73 degrees F.), which is the highest recorded temperature in Iceland in April.
“There is still sweltering sunshine here,” Aevar Ísak Sigurgeirsson, who works at the shop in Ásbyrgi, told Icelandic newspaper Fréttabladid.
Until last month, the highest recorded temperature in Iceland in April was 21.8°C (71 degrees F.) in Saudanes on the Langanes peninsula, East Iceland, in 2003.
The average temperature in Iceland in April is little over 5°C (41 degrees F.), while the average temperature during June, July and August is 10 to 15°C (50-59 degrees F.).
There are unusually many tourists in Ásbyrgi at this time of year. “It was great, but we are so realistic that we wondered whether this would be the hottest day of summer, but hoped for the best,” Sigurgeirsson said.

Heat records were broken in other parts of the country too. The temperature in Akureyri, northeast Iceland, went up to 21.5°C (71 degrees F.) in late April as well, which is a record temperature there for April. (To see the weather in Iceland at any time, visit the Icelandic Meteorological Office at http://www.vedur.is/english/landspae.shtml).

Taste of Iceland

Taste of Iceland Comes to New York and Boston – We know a public relations
executive who is so crazy about skyr, Iceland’s centuries-old organic
dairy product, he buys a container to eat on the way to the baggage claim
when he arrives at Keflavik Airport. Skyr, produced since Viking times,
tastes like a combination of yogurt and cream cheese, yet is fat free.
Made from nutritive-rich skim milk, it is produced in dairies that get
their power and heat from geothermal steam vents and hydroelectric dams.

Now New Yorkers and Bostonians won’t have to travel far for their skyr
(pronounced “skeer”), or other recently imported Icelandic foods: Hofdingi
cheese, Noi Sirius chocolates, Stori-Dimon cheese, and Smjor butter.

Whole Foods Market has announced that all five of these Icelandic taste
treats will be available at Metropolitan New York- and Boston-area stores.
With every bite of skyr, you’re consuming a little bit of history along
with protein and calcium. It’s so good, it’s “skeery.” (For more
information about skyr, log onto www.skyr.is; for the location of the nearest Whole Foods Market, visit www.wholefoodsmarket.com/).

They Said It

Ok, we’re tired of talking about ourselves. Here’s what the media is saying about their recent Iceland experiences.

“And that’s how I came to Iceland, a hardy island that has always tantalized me with its alluring self-containment, its beautiful harshness, its dried fish and its rock music … Iceland, a place where few American adventure outfitters go because there’s no comfort grade higher than basic to be found in the shelters along the rough hiking trails.”

– Lisa Schwarzbaum in an 8-page, 50-mile trekking story in More Magazine, May 2007.

“Eskifjord retains the traditions laid out more than a millennium ago by Norse fishermen. It’s a place preserved in time, one far removed from the hipster shops of Reykjavik and the celebrated geothermal Blue Lagoon – and one most visitors to Iceland don’t take the opportunity to see.”

- Town and Country Travel, Summer 2007

“There’s something magical about the horses in Iceland and how they connect with people. We were driving in Western Iceland and noticed two horses in a field, one of them standing statue-still on a mound of earth in the distance. We stopped the car and ran over to take a picture, and along came this beauty for a friendly greeting. She was like a model posing for her big shot on a blustery day. The moment set the tone for our Icelandic adventure.”

– Condé Nast Traveller, May 2007
“Craggy basalt lavafields and columns of steam rising from a volcanic landscape - these are the images that greet visitors at the Reykjavik Airport.” (Well, it’s really called the Keflavik International Airport, home of the Leifur Eiriksson Air Terminal, but who are we to quibble?).

U.S News and World Report, March 26

“Europe’s westernmost nation offers the best of both worlds: wild and civilized.”
– National Geographic Traveler, May-June issue

For information on other exciting activities in Iceland, be sure to visit: