Since the early 1990s, Iceland has become Europe's most popular adventure-travel destination, particularly with European budget travelers. With barely a quarter million people, scenic volcanic landscapes, and Europe's largest glacier, it's easy to see why. Iceland's coastal regions are lush and green and resemble the Hawaiian islands without palm trees and mosquitoes. And like Hawaii, the island's basalt formations reveal an explosive geological past. The Kentucky-sized island sits atop one of the world's most active geological zones, the Mid Atlantic Ridge. About one-third of all lava spewed on the earth's surface since 1,000 A.D. is of Icelandic origin.

Like most visitors, I flew into the international airport at Keflavík, about 45 minutes from the capital, Reykjavík. It's a human-friendly, clean, and expensive city. The highlight of my visits to Reykjavík in 1998 and 1999 was a tour of the building housing the AlÞing, or parliament. The AlÞing is the world's longest surviving parliamentary tradition, dating back to the 10th century A.D., when the first Viking settlers established a home government. It typifies Iceland's Democratic tradition (the country only achieved independence in 1944, having endured centuries of foreign domination).

Like their government, Icelanders are no-nonsense and devoid of Europe's class traditions. For a full-blooded Yank, this was delightful, even though the locals were reserved, but polite, with the thousands, upon thousands of tourists who were overwhelming their island nation.

I used Iceland as a stopover point to visit Greenland. It rained much of the time, sometimes extremely hard. Despite Iceland's gorgeous volcanic and fjord-choked scenery, I found the landscape oddly sterile. Still, I enjoyed the north and east fjords, where tiny communities sit beneath thousand-foot tall mountains. My favorite city was Olafsfjördur, a coastal community in the island's north that is blessed by staggeringly gorgeous surroundings.

However, I went crazy over Iceland's infamous heated swimming pools, called the sundlaug. Found in every Icelandic city, the sundlaug is the hub of Icelandic culture and the best way to meet Icelanders. For the entrance price of about $2.45 (pretty much uniform throughout the island), you can soothe your body in water heated courtesy of Island's free and abundant geothermal energy. A larger facility always will have an outdoor swimming pool, plus at least one warmer Jacuzzi. The fancier facilities also include kids pools, slides, multiple hot baths, and possibly a sauna and massage room. The locker-room showers blast out Iceland's wonderfully hot and faintly sulfuric smelling water. Sometimes, I visited a pool twice a day!

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