"Iceland - Water, ice & lava." a Iceland Travel Page by maartenw

Just returned from an awesome trip to Iceland. Working hard on more tips and pages at the moment.

Iceland is an extraordinary holiday destination. Many things that can be such a nuisance or spoil your holiday fun in other countries are simply nonexistent here. I consider Iceland one of the most sophisticated countries because it doesn't have any: crowds, wasps, ants, reptiles, heat, traffic jams, Euros, army and railway.

In July 2007 we flew to the town of Akureyri in the north and with our little rental 4WD we drove 1670 km clockwise around the island to end 10 days later in the capital Reykjavik.

- Iceland has a little over 300,000 inhabitants of which 117,000 live in the city of Reykjavik.
- Surface area is 103.125 sq.km. About the size of Kentucky.
- It is a geologically very young country; just 20 million years old,
- Only 20% of the country is covered with vegetation (for grazing). Only 1% is cultivated. Trees are very rare.
- Glaciers make up almost 11% of the land area. The largest, Vatnajökull, is bigger than all European mainland glaciers together.
- Iceland has it's own currency, the Icelandic Krona. 100 ISK = 1.21 Euro = US$ 1.67
- The Icelandic parliament, Alţingi, is the oldest in the world and dates back to the year 930.
- With the exception of the little island of Grimsey, Iceland lies just south of the arctic circle.
- Outside the country itself there is only one concentration of speakers of the Icelandic language: the town of Gimli in Manitoba Canada.

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I will subsequently add pages for the different towns/regions/sites we've visited along the way in chronological order:

- Akureyri
- Húsavík
- Mývatn