During this trip, I noticed some interesting differences from home. In Iceland, light switches flip down to turn the light on, and up for off -- and most door locks require 3-5 rotations to lock or unlock a door (as compared to the typical half-turn here in the U.S.).

But one difference was hard to get used to. For some reason, many doorways in Iceland feature a height change and a raised bar that crosses the bottom of the door opening (which I can only describe as a 'trip bar'). Hotels, stores, restaurants -- this seemed true nearly everywhere.

I have no idea what possible purpose this serves (maybe to prevent snow from blowing in during the winter?) -- but a more humorous guess is that it provides an easy way for Icelanders to quickly identify tourists. You get used to it after a while, but if you visit for less than a week, you'll probably trip going through every doorway.

By the way, did I mention that every third store here is a wool store?

Also -- sorry for my terrible artistic skills. One of these days I'll take a drawing class, haha. -DL