On the 26th of November, Chris and I welcomed our friends Claire and Jeffrey to Reykjavík. They're our first friends from Minneapolis to visit us at Ásvallagata, and we were overjoyed to have them stay with us. While they were here, we got to do and see some things we've neither done nor seen before, so I'd like to share some highlights of our group adventures with you. This will be a picture-heavy post, and not necessarily in the order of things, but that's how memory goes. It all gets jumbled together, but it was all great!

We rented a car from Sad Cars. Yes, the company is called Sad Cars, and it is the cheapest option we could find for car rentals here. The driver's side mirror was affixed with duct tape, and the rear windshield wiper didn't work, but it did its job of getting us where we needed to go, so our sad car made us happy.

The landscape changed quickly, and it started to wow us all. We chased glimpses of sky and looked for evidence of the sun that Claire & Jeff had not seen since their arrival. The rule was that we would pull over anytime anyone wanted to and get out and explore, hike, or take photos.

We saw lots of Icelandic horses as we drove, so at one point we decided to pull over and try to get a closer look. They are stunningly beautiful creatures, and to our surprise they started to run. (There's probably a better, more horsey word for how they moved, but I have heard they have many more gaits than a typical horse, and I haven't a clue what any of the usual gaits are called. I even had to look up how to spell the word "gait," so my limited horsey vocabulary will have to suffice, my friends.) To our surprise, they clip-clopped toward us. One horse was particularly brave and led the rest over to the fence where we stood. Chris ran back to the car to grab the carrots he had brought along as a snack. We figured giving them a treat would be the least we could do since they were being so friendly and cute.