Welcome to Iceland Guest - Your Online Travel Guide.

Iceland Guest is an information website for your travel to Iceland. On this site you can get all the tourist information you need for your vacation in Iceland. We hope that you will find this online travel guide useful in planning your holidays in Iceland.

About Iceland
Iceland is a refreshingly unconventional travel destination. The Icelandic nature is unspoilt, exotic and mystical with its spouting geysers, active volcanoes, tumbling waterfalls, towering mountains, vast lava plains and magical lakes. Iceland’s fjords, glaciers and highland plains present visitors with some of the most beautiful and enchanting places they will ever see, as well as a rare feeling of utter tranquillity.

For travelers on a quest for action, Iceland’s pristine nature offers great potential for outdoor activities such as snowmobiling, horse riding, cave exploring, hiking, swimming, skiing, river rafting, kayaking and mountain safaris on modified four-wheel drives, to name but a few. Iceland supports a surprisingly diverse Nordic flora and fauna and is an ideal place for ornithology enthusiasts, while also offering some of the world’s best whale watching destinations.

About Reykjavik
Reykjavík sometimes feels like a cosmopolitan capital and a tiny seaside village - all wrapped up in one. But Reykjavík has the best of both worlds; the qualities of a modern, forward-looking society complemented by a close connection to Iceland‚s beautiful and unspoilt nature.

Reykjavík’s legendary nightlife is bolstered by plentiful cultural and social happenings in addition to an abundance of first-class restaurants. The size of Reykjavik city centre is also limited enough to allow for easy navigation by foot. Reykjavík has been described as a young and daring city that is characterized by strong contrasts. Conveniently small, clean and safe, it is more or less free from the major problems that haunt many other capitals. Big city events are frequent, the winter lights festival finished recently with thousands of participants and more tourist at this time of the year than we are used to.

in Focus

19.4.2007

Icelandic Tenor Warms Up West Ham and Chelsea Fans

Icelandic tenor warms up West Ham and Chelsea fans Thousands listened to the young Icelandic tenor Gardar Thor Cortes at London's Uptown Park, the home ground of premier league football team West Ham, half an hour before the start of its important match with a fellow London team, England 2006 champions Chelsea. First on his two-song repertoire was the aria Nessun dorma by Puccini. Then he sang the official fan song of West Ham, "I'm forever blowing bubbles," and the thousands of West Ham fans sang along with him. The Uptown Park stadium seats 35,000 spectators and Gardar commented that this was his largest audience to that day as opera houses are at most built for 2,000 guests.

"It was great," Gardar said shortly after his performance, "it is totally different singing in a football stadium than in an opera house." He added that Nessun dorma has almost become standard as a "football song" since Luciano Pavarotti sang it at the opening ceremony of the 1990 Football World Championship.

When Gardar was asked by the correspondent of the Morgunbladid newspaper whether he is a dedicated fan of the "Icelandic team" West Ham, owned by Icelandic billionaire Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson and a team of Icelandic investors, he replies, "no, not like that actually, but one always supports Icelanders wherever they are. I am sort of glad that Eidur Gudjohnsen no longer plays for Chelsea. Then things would have been more difficult." The Icelandic football ace Mr. Gudjohnsen now plays for the Spanish team Barcelona.

The players of West Ham were in the middle of warming up for the match while Gardar was singing, and he says he didn't say hello to them while that went on. Mr. Cortes had to leave the green grass before the match started for an interview on a radio show about his new record, "Cortes," which has been selling very well in the UK.

Gardar Cortes has been recognized as one of the most promising young tenors to appear on the international opera scene for years, where young singers vie for the top spot as the famous three tenors Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras near the end of their active careers. Perhaps Gardar Cortes will be singing in more stadiums in the future?

For further information about Gardar Thor Cortes visit the websites, www.cortes.is and www.believer.is.

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