Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne

Today is officially the first day of winter in Iceland, and it certainly pulled out all the stops in order to make sure that we realised this - more on that later.
This week my friend Rachel came to visit me, Rachel lives in Hamburg, but is originally from Melbourne, we met in Hamburg when I was living there. The visit was a spur of the moment thing and I thank her for taking the time to come up here to the frozen north! Good for us Icelanders to get some Euro´s spent in the country. Here is Rachel on the hill above town - see those great mountains. I do so love this place!

On Thursday night I invited Maggi and Guðný over for dinner - we had roasted sheeps back... yummy!! followed by the usual berry dessert - this time with strawberries from mums garden, blue berries from the hills above town and blackberries imported from somewhere... as usual it went down well with copious quantities of red wine.

´We don´t usually go out on a Thursday night - but as Rachel was here we made an exception to our normal drinking rules and went to Mælifell, THE bar in town. Rachel found our references to THE shop, THE bar, THE restaurant quite amuzing (you see we only really have one of each... bit like the third world really - but hey - have you heard - there is a recession)

As you can see the bar was a bit deserted. We managed to have a good time, played a game of pool and drank a beer or two. As THE taxi driver was not answering his phone I decided to brave the elements and the possibility of losing my license and drove Maggi and Guðný home. Well, we got as far as Maggi´s where a mini party ensued - this was sooooo out of character for all of us - we blame Rachel for this ofcourse. Anyway got home again (I was ofcourse on the water by this stage). The next morning Rachel was taking the bus to Reykjavik, so we were up at 8am had coffee at mums and then I picked up Maggi, drove him to work (his car being down here), then took Rachel to the bus, then picked up Guðný and drove her to work (her car was downtown too). After all this I had a nap - as you do.... However, before napping I went for a walk with the dog and saw this front coming in.

With the cloud came snow - lots of it.

This was today, no driving the subaru till I dig it out of the snow...

Main street - this morning - looks good hey!

Spent the afternoon at Herdís´s shop finishing the lighthouse - not bad hey.

My house really does look good in snow...

Maggi just called to say that he is snowed in and so won´t be making it to dinner - yep Winter has definitely arrived. Now to do the tag/punch thing that Maja did.