Gill - Frommers EasyGuide to Iceland

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ISBN 978-1-62887-180-7 (paper), 978-1-62887-181-4 (ebk)

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5 4 3 2 1

Frommer's Star Ratings System

Every hotel, restaurant and attraction listed in this guide has been ranked for quality and value. Heres what the stars mean:

Recommended

Highly Recommended

A must! Don't miss!

AN IMPORTANT NOTE

The world is a dynamic place. Hotels change ownership, restaurants hike their prices, museums alter their opening hours, and busses and trains change their routings. And all of this can occur in the several months after our authors have visited, inspected, and written about, these hotels, restaurants, museums and transportation services. Though we have made valiant efforts to keep all our information fresh and up-to-date, some few changes can inevitably occur in the periods before a revised edition of this guidebook is published. So please bear with us if a tiny number of the details in this book have changed. Please also note that we have no responsibility or liability for any inaccuracy or errors or omissions, or for inconvenience, loss, damage, or expenses suffered by anyone as a result of assertions in this guide.

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Gill is a food and travel writer based in Brooklyn, New York and Lima, Peru. He has spent the past decade exploring the boundaries and possibilities of cuisine in the Americas. He is a co-founder of Newworlder.com , and contributes to publications like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fool Magazine, Bon Apptit, Saveur, New York Magazine, and Roads & Kingdoms.

ABOUT THE FROMMER TRAVEL GUIDES

For most of the past 50 years, Frommers has been the leading series of travel guides in North America, accounting for as many as 24% of all guidebooks sold. I think I know why.

Though we hope our books are entertaining, we nevertheless deal with travel in a serious fashion. Our guidebooks have never looked on such journeys as a mere recreation, but as a far more important human function, a time of learning and introspection, an essential part of a civilized life. We stress the culture, lifestyle, history, and beliefs of the destinations we cover, and urge our readers to seek out people and new ideas as the chief rewards of travel.

We have never shied from controversy. We have, from the beginning, encouraged our authors to be intensely judgmental, criticalboth pro and conin their comments, and wholly independent. Our only clients are our readers, and we have triggered the ire of countless prominent sorts, from a tourist newspaper we called practically worthless (it unsuccessfully sued us) to the many rip-offs weve condemned.

And because we believe that travel should be available to everyone regardless of their incomes, we have always been cost-conscious at every level of expenditure. Though we have broadened our recommendations beyond the budget category, we insist that every lodging we include be sensibly priced. We use every form of media to assist our readers, and are particularly proud of our feisty daily website, the award-winning Frommers.com.

I have high hopes for the future of Frommers. May these guidebooks, in all the years ahead, continue to reflect the joy of travel and the freedom that travel represents. May they always pursue a cost-conscious path, so that people of all incomes can enjoy the rewards of travel. And may they create, for both the traveler and the persons among whom we travel, a community of friends, where all human beings live in harmony and peace.

Arthur Frommer

The Best of Iceland

S traddling the rift between the Eurasian and North American continental plates, Icelands one-of-a-kind geography leaves little to the imagination. By summer the country is moss-covered lava fields, steep rocky mountainsides dotted with freely roaming sheep, pockets of forest in an otherwise treeless expanse, and bright nights of song and dance in the crisp polar air. By winter, it is bright lights darting across the sky like restless ghosts, people bathing in hot springs with snow melting in the steam just above their heads, fairy lights glowing in all the windows. Icelands astonishing beauty often has an austere, primitive, or surreal cast that arouses reverence, wonderment, mystery, and awe. Lasting impressions could include a lone tuft of blue wildflowers against a bleak desert moonscape or a fantastical promenade of icebergs calved into a lake from a magisterial glacier. This is the essence of Icelandendless variations of magnificent scenery and adventure.

Icelands people are freedom-loving, egalitarian, self-reliant, and worldly. They established a parliamentary democracy more than a millennium ago, and today write, publish, and read more books per capita than any other people on earth. The country is still one of the worlds best to live in, based on life expectancy, education levels, medical care, income, and other U.N. criteria. Reykjavk has become one of the worlds most fashionable urban hot spots.

For somewhere so small, Iceland has made more than its fair share of global news. In 2008, the booming economy overstretched itself wildly and went into meltdown, leading to the collapse of the countrys three main banks and leaving the nation with a massive debt. It has since bounced back and effects on the tourist industry have been minimalone of the main ones being a better exchange rate for most tourists. Then there was the 2010 volcanic eruption in South Iceland, which produced an ash cloud big enough to ground planes across Europe, divert flights from North America, and irrevocably change the landscape of the area. Yet even at the height of the eruption, it was business as usual in most places across Iceland. When some areas near the volcano became temporarily inaccessible, tourists were presented with once-in-a-lifetime alternatives, such as lava sightseeing by helicopter.

Throughout this book, we inform you about Icelands better places to visit, dine, and sleep, and in this chapter we give you a taste of the very best. Some are classics, such as the Blue Lagoon, while others are less well-known. We hope youll benefit from the inside informationand that youll go see for yourself and create your own list of bests.

Iceland