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

15.5.2007

Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet Honored in Iceland

Artistic director of San Francisco Ballet honored Icelander Helgi Tómasson, the artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, was honored with the Grand Cross of the Falcon Order, the grandest Icelandic reward, at a special ceremony at the presidential residence Bessastadir yesterday.

“I am extremely proud to receive this from my own nation,” Tómasson said as he received the medal from Iceland’s President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson. Morgunbladid reports.

Fifty years have passed since an Icelander was given the Grand Cross for his contribution to culture and art. In 1957 the medal was given to Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness. Usually only heads of state are rewarded with the Grand Cross.

“I feel nervous to be taken into such a group; this is fantastic. I could never imagine this would happen; it didn’t cross my mind,” Tómasson told Morgunbladid.

Tómasson is in Iceland with a large group of dancers from the San Francisco Ballet to perform in Reykjavík City Theater in relation to the Reykjavík Arts Festival.

Next year the San Francisco Ballet celebrates its 70th anniversary and on that occasion ten pieces by Tómasson will be staged. “It is work seven days of week and all day,” the artistic director said.

Tómasson (born 1942) worked as a dancer in New York for 25 years before he was hired as the artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet in 1985, which is the first professional dance company in the United States.

Source: Iceland Review (www.icelandreview.com).

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