Wednesday 30th May 2001, 1230 BST
Rendezvous in Reykjavik
by Steff Gaulter | |  Reykjavik - the beer is really not that expensive, honest | | Iceland is an island with diverse and spectacular landscapes.
Its capital Reykjavik has recently become a trendy place to visit but is very expensive. Now that some of the low-cost airlines offer flights to the city it is relatively cheap to get there, but hotels and rental cars are still very costly.
If you stray from the main road to Reykjavik, you will discover that the roads are generally tracks over lava fields, so this would explain the expense of hire cars!
The city comes alive at night, locals often setting out for the night well after midnight. There are all sorts of horror stories about the prices of drinks, but in the average pub a pint came to about £3, so expensive, but not quite the £8 sometimes quoted.
 | | Steff in a hot spring, surrounded by geysers |
The island is part of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, and therefore has a lot of volcanic activity.
Iceland utilises this the its full potential. About 90 per cent of the electricity used on the island is generated from geothermal energy, and that geothermal activity also provides some of Iceland’s most stunning tourist attractions, including hot springs and geysers.
Considering how far north the country is, the average temperatures are surprisingly mild.
Like the UK, it is in the path of the Gulf Stream, pumping relatively warm water to its shores. This keeps the average temperature in January around -5C, whereas parts of Northern Canada on the same latitude have an average of a bitterly cold -25C.
However the Gulf Stream not only makes it relatively mild, but also makes it wet and stormy. In winter there are often gales and thick fog that does not lift all day, so the best time to visit Iceland is during the summer.
The main obstacle in visiting at any other time is the number of daylight hours.
In January it drops to just over four hours, and the little sun they do see is low in the sky, hugging the horizon but in the summer there is plenty of daylight.
Reykjavik itself does not quite experience 24-hour daylight, but it is not far off in June and July with around 21 hours. |
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