One eyed cars

In Iceland it's the law that you must drive with your headlights on at all times, even in the middle of the day. But what is incredibly odd is that at least 10 percent of the cars only have one working headlight. I noticed this early in the trip, and thought maybe it was just a fluke. But as I continued to pay attention to approaching cars, I kept seeing the one-eyed cars. I asked a half dozen Icelanders for an explanation, but none knew. In fact, most of them had never even noticed.

The ratio seemed lower in the big city of Reykjavik. But on one stretch of rural road, out of about two-dozen cars that passed, half had only one headlight.

My best guess was that with no auto parts stores in rural areas, headlights might be hard to come by. But one native I asked said that most gas stations sold headlights.

Back a few decades in the United States, there was a informal custom that if you and your sweetheart passed a car with one headlight, you had to kiss. If that custom was common today in Iceland they'd be kissing all the time.

Iceland money

The currency in Iceland is the Krona. More than one Krona is called a Kronur. Here are a couple of bills so you can see what they look like. A thousand Kronur is worth about $8 in U.S money. The handiest coin is 100 Kronur. I ended up with a pocketful at the end of every day. I tended to spend bills more often than coins because without putting on my reading glasses I couldn't tell most coins apart. The sizes sometimes don't make sense. A 10 Kronur coin is a lot bigger than a 50 Kronur coin. Half the time I didn't even know how much I was spending because I had to convert Kronurs to dollars in my head, and sometimes I was just too lazy. It was especially hard figuring out how much fruit and vegetables cost in the market because the weight is posted in kilograms.