Picture it: You're about to set off on the overseas vacation of a lifetime. With bags packed and boarding passes ready to go, you make it to the airport with plenty of time before departure.
14.01.2024 - 13:25 / insider.com
Iceland's glaciers, black sand beaches, and the chance of catching the Northern Lights attract well over a million visitors a year. But it wasn't until November that I visited the tiny island nation for the first time, on a reporting trip.
Here's what surprised me during my four nights in the country.
Iceland had about 397,000 residents as of September 2023, compared to almost 40 million in California alone. Iceland has nearly as many sheep as people.
But Iceland's population is concentrated in the west of the country. The capital, Reykjavik, has about 140,000 residents – more than a third of the country's population. The so-called capital region, which encompasses and surrounds Reykjavik, accounts for more than 62% of the country's population.
While there, I visited Iceland's southernmost village, Vik, which has a population of less than 1,000. The country is full of tiny, isolated settlements like this. Few towns have more than 10,000 residents.
There's no McDonald's, Starbucks, or Burger King in Iceland. McDonald's Icelandic franchisee dropped the brand during the country's financial crisis in 2009 after the collapse of the local currency made importing ingredients that met McDonald's quality standards too expensive, according to Vísir.
You can still get KFC chicken, Domino's pizzas, and Subway sandwiches, though.
Retailers also sell a limited range of products, and you may struggle to find the fresh produce or brands of cereals you're used to, expats told me.
You might be used to picking up a bottle of wine when you're grocery shopping or grabbing a case of beer on your way home from work. It's a little trickier in Iceland, though.
Generally you need to go to a state-run liquor store to buy alcohol. Other Nordic nations like Finland, Norway, and Sweden have similar policies.
Those in the countryside have limited opening hours; even in the capital region, none are open past 8 p.m. on Fridays. You also have to be 20 to buy alcohol in Iceland, compared to 18 in most European countries.
Homes and businesses alike are adorned with fairy lights during the winter months, and they're a stark contrast to the tacky and garish ones sometimes spotted in the UK. Golden lights border windows and are draped around trees and hedges.
Many neighborhoods arrange to get matching lights, Jewells Chambers, an expat from New York, told me. "They look really coordinated but also classier."
"When it's dark for four months of the year, you just live with fairy lights on because you need a little bit more light, a little bit of magic," Sonia Nicolson, who relocated from the UK to Reykjavik, told me.
Some cafés and coffee-shop chains in the UK offer non-dairy milk for free, but I'm accustomed to paying between 30 to 50 pence
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