Cheapflights.com Salutes the Sun

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jun 17, 2015) - This year, Sunday, June 21^st, will be a day of many celebrations. It is Father's Day, of course, but it is also the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. This is the much-celebrated day when the sun shines longer than any other and summer officially begins for all those north of the equator. The travel experts at Cheapflights.com, the online leader in finding and publishing travel deals, join in the revelry with their Top 10 Summer Solstice Celebrations around the World featuring traditional and cultural events that salute this turning point of the year.

From sun salutations in Times Square to aboriginal storytelling in Canada, here are five celebrations you can join to make the most of the longest day of the year:

• Secret Solstice Festival, Reykjavik, Iceland - Home of the midnight sun, Iceland is the perfect place to get the full solstice experience. An Icelandic sunset on the solstice is around midnight and sunrise is a little before 3 a.m. Light sleepers may want to find a hotel with thick curtains or, better yet, use the extended daylight to see and do more. Iceland's Secret Solstice Midnight Sun Music Festival is a three-day music festival that makes good use of the extra daylight. With electronic, hip-hop, rock and reggae acts, the festival is a musical smorgasbord and with 72 hours of sunlight, it is most definitely the Energizer bunny of music festivals.
  
  
• Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England - The site itself is cloaked in mystery, and historians, archaeologists and mystics alike have long debated its baffling construction. Impressively, Neolithic builders created the massive stone structure with primitive tools made from wood and deer antlers. And, while theories abound, we may never know for sure whether it was an ancient burial ground, a temple of worship to ancient earth gods, a prehistoric observatory or something we've yet to consider. Today, the summer solstice draws an eclectic mix of druids, pagans and miscellaneous revelers to Stonehenge to witness the sun rising above the stone circle, which aligns perfectly with the summer solstice sunrise.
  
  
• Solstice in Times Square, New York, New York, United States - Where better to spend the longest day of the year than the city that never sleeps? Celebrate the start of summer with sun salutations amid the urban bustle of New York City. Solstice in Times Square, a day-long yoga event now in its 13th year, begins at 7 a.m. on the solstice and continues until just before sunset. Adding to the excitement, the day has also been named International Day of Yoga by the United Nations General Assembly. Not in New York? Participate remotely via the event's live webcast.
  
  
• Summer Solstice Aboriginal Arts Festival, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada - The summer solstice has long been celebrated by the aboriginal people across Canada, and, since 1996, the celestial event has coincided with National Aboriginal Day. To mark the event, the Summer Solstice Aboriginal Arts Festival brings together the urban aboriginal community with a family-friendly outing that draws a substantial and diverse crowd of aboriginal and non-aboriginal attendees. Held at Vincent Massey Park, the three-day event includes traditional dance, music and storytelling to celebrate the solstice, as well as the area's aboriginal culture.
  
  
• Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Celebration, Santa Barbara, California, United States - This Southern California event has been a summer staple since 1974 and it attracts more than 100,000 visitors from around the world with its colorful floats, festive costumes and musical stylings. The unique celebration of creative expression was originally conceived by artist and mime Michael Gonzales but, over the years, this whimsical event has taken on a life of its own. Each year's Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Celebration has a theme, and 2015 will find parade-goers donning out-of-this-world costumes befitting a sci-fi motif.

Solstice Fires, Tyrol, Austria; Wianki, Krakow, Poland; Festival of Saint Joan, Menorca, Spain; Midsummer, Stockholm, Sweden; and Astrofest, Istria, Croatia, round out Cheapflights.com's Top 10 Summer Solstice Celebrations around the World. To read all the details, visit www.cheapflights.com/news/top-10-summer-solstice-celebrations-around-the-world.

About Cheapflights.com, part of the Momondo Group
Momondo Group is an online travel media and technology company that is driven by the belief that an open world is a better world. The group now serves travel search and inspiration to over 17.5 million visitors a month -- plus 8 million travel newsletter subscribers -- via its Cheapflights (www.cheapflights.com) and momondo (www.momondo.com) brands.

Skygate began the sourcing of complex air-travel data in 1992, while Cheapflights pioneered the online comparison of flight deals for users in 1996 and momondo launched meta-search in the Nordic countries in 2006.

The Group has offices in London, Copenhagen and Boston with a consumer base across more than 30 core international markets but users all over the world.

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