{"id":25074,"date":"2019-09-24T22:39:50","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T21:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25074"},"modified":"2019-10-01T13:12:54","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T12:12:54","slug":"visit-to-iceland-1-arrival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=25074","title":{"rendered":"Visit to Iceland (1): arrival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For more than a decade now, my sister Silvia and I have had a tradition of most years taking a holiday abroad together without our partners and this year our 13th such trip is to Iceland with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.regent-holidays.co.uk\/country\/iceland-holidays\/\">Regent Travel<\/a>. It is a new destination for both of us and the 74th country that I have visited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is almost a three hour flight from London to Reykjavik. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, Iceland is not as cold as it sounds and it enjoys a cool temperate, oceanic climate with temperatures at this time of year about 12C.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Iceland is said to have been first inhabited in 874 AD and it has the world\u2019s oldest and longest-running parliament. For most of its history, it was controlled by Norway and then&nbsp; Denmark and it has only been an independent nation since 1918.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The population is merely about 360,000 &#8211; something like the size of a London borough &#8211; and some two-thirds of the population live in or around the capital Reykjavik. Since the country now receives about 2.2 million tourists a year, that is more than six times the population.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Icelandic language has hardly changed in 1,000 years. The alphabet has 32 letters and there are approximately 50 words for snow.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Iceland is the ninth most expensive country in the world because of the need to import so much and the high cost of labour. The cost of a cappuccino in a cafe in the capital is around \u00a34-6 and a restaurant meal is anything from \u00a345 upwards.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are staying at the Hotel Reykjavik Centrum which has 89 rooms located in three colourful 18th century-style buildings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For more than a decade now, my sister Silvia and I have had a tradition of most years taking a holiday abroad together without our partners and this year our 13th such trip is to Iceland with Regent Travel. It is a new destination for both of us and the 74th country that I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25074"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25106,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25074\/revisions\/25106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}