My iconic travel moments

Posted on by Juliet Frost

The other day – today, from my point of view but three weeks ago from yours – I saw a post by Wilbur’s Travels about his iconic travel moments and I liked the idea and stole it. He’s made a series of posts on the subject, with each moment getting it own post but I thought I’d just stick to the one post and run through my top ten.

There’s no particular order to these. They’re not chronological, they’re not in order of importance to my travel life or personal development, it’s just me sitting down, going “hmmm, what was iconic?” What does “iconic” mean anyway? I’ve gone for… kind of life-changing or highly significant or occasionally very on-brand for someone who’s made being a polar bear her internet identity.

And so, in the order that I thought of them:

Helsinki 2008

Helsinki seafront. A late winter afternoon. The sky is pastel blue with a hint of yellow lower down, the buildings are colourful and a square white cathedal dominates the skyline.

This was my first real solo trip abroad. I’d lived and travelled on my own in Switzerland during my year abroad but the travels don’t really count because that’s where I lived at the time. No, Helsinki was the first time I’d booked a flight in cold blood and gone off to explore somewhere new on my own. It was a formative experience. It was also my first introduction to somewhere really cold. I did a certain amount of shopping in preparation for that trip whereas by now, I’ve accumulated enough cold-weather stuff that all I have to do is replace things that are too small or falling apart. Yeah, introduction to solo travel, to the Nordic region and to travelling to cold places. I’d say that’s pretty iconic.

Blog post: My first solo trip: Helsinki 2008

Laugavegur Trail 2018

A dirt track crosses a dull green landscape. On the trail, eight or nine people are walking in a a line towards a pointy mountain and a heavy cloud in the distance.

Not include Iceland’s iconic mountain trek in my iconic travel moments? Oh, this was a week! I survived a blizzard, hiked around a canyon, camped in the mountains and arrived at the end point triumphant and in sandals. No, I didn’t walk day two, I went in the support car. It’s about knowing what’s best for you and for the group. I don’t regret it and I don’t resent it. It’s the hardest walk I’ve ever done, it’s the only multi-day hike I’ve ever done and it absolutely counts as an iconic moment. Amazing six days.

Blog posts: The Laugavegur Diaries

Russia 2019

A timer selfie of me in the middle of an Arctic wilderness in summer. The trees are scrubby, the grass is more moss than anything else, the sky is blue and there's a 116ft concrete soldier statue behind me. I'm wearing a black t-shirt and a teal cross-body bag which is holding up a navy hoodie. I'm standing with my left arm up and my right arm down, like it's the first chance I've had to take a proper selfie in nearly two weeks.

I think there are three iconic moments in this trip. Red Square by night is definitely one. I saw Red Square by day when I first got to Russia and it was covered by a market. Then I went off for a couple of weeks and when I got back, the market was gone, the Square was empty, the views were wonderful and my hotel overlooked the Kremlin walls so I went out at night and it was magical.

Murmansk is another iconic moment. Arctic Russia! I was reasonably accustomed to the Scandinavian/Nordic/European Arctic by then but the Russian Arctic just feels like something else. And Murmansk, it turned out, is not on the tourist trail. Even my landlady in Ekaterinburg was horrified when I said I’d just flown in from a couple of days in Murmansk – on my own!

And the Trans-Siberian Railway is the third. An iconic journey, if just a very short section of it. I wouldn’t say I’ve “ticked it off” but I’ve sampled it and I know roughly what it’s like and again, to do it on my own. Iconic moment.

That time on day three when I was asked for directions in Russian and was able to answer was a pretty good moment too.

Blog posts: The Russian Odyssey

Trondheim/Tromsø 2012

I'm standing on a patch of concrete above a road. A strip of houses and a bit of industrial estate separates the road from a very cold bay, which is reflecting the bright sky above. In the distance are some perfect snow-covered blue and white mountains. I'm wearing an olive-green t-shirt, jeans and sandals.

Oh, the first time I went to the Arctic Circle, absolutely. Travel-iconic but also personal brand-iconic. It was May but the mountains around Tromso were so snowy and the harbour was kind of grey. I have that amazing photo outside the Arctic Cathedral with all those mountains in the background and I also saw the true Midnight Sun for the first time – and the last, I’ve only ever been to the Arctic in winter since then.

Blog post: The day I fell in love with the Arctic

Svalbard 2015

It's a bit blurry because my camera doesn't like taking photos in the dark but I'm kneeling in the snow, wearing lots of warm clothes and a fluorescent vest, playing with a huge fluffy dog who's rolling on his back and even blurrier because he's not staying still for the camera.

Everything about this trip! The High Arctic! 24-hour darkness! Dogsledding! Freezing my hair walking back from the pool. Svalbard was amazing. What kind of polar bear hasn’t been to the High Arctic? It would have been nice to see a polar bear in the wild but on the other hand, I have to remember that it’s not just a cutesy blog name but a real life massive hungry carnivore, top of the food chain and all that, so it’s probably just a s well not to see one. But going to Svalbard, going all that way up into the Arctic and in the winter too, that’s pretty iconic.

Blog posts: Svalbard

Iceland September 2017

A long-exposure photo of a wooden campsite building (its lights aren't that bright, it's the long exposure) with a dark blue sky overhead. Streaking the middle of the picture is a bright band of green light, slightly more blue-tinted than the yellow-tinted greens you usually see.

This was the first time I’ve ever driven a campervan, so that was interesting. All the convenience and spontaneity of camping without having to put a tent up every day and then freeze in it. It wasn’t a particularly iconic trip in itself. My first campervan experience is worthy of a footnote but not that exciting. It’s one of those trips that had an iconic moment nestled in it. My penultimate night. I was camping at Akranes. I got out of the van to go over to the office and borrow their wifi. It didn’t reach as far as the van but I could stand against the office wall and stick an update on Facebook. And at that moment, when I would have been inside a windowless van without that desire to tell the world where I was, the Northern Lights burst out overhead. I wasn’t looking for them. I wasn’t expecting them. I wasn’t in the Northern Lights-hunt uniform of everything I’ve brought with me. I was wearing sandals! And there’s the Northern Lights overhead and that’s a pretty iconic moment.

Blog post: I accidentally saw the Northern Lights!

Ukraine 2018

Tour group photo gathered in front of the abandoned big wheel at the theme park at Pripyat. I'm fourth from the right, wearing a yellow top under a black jacket.

Really, this was visa-free practice for Russia but Kyiv turned out to be a beautiful city. Going to the Chernobyl exclusion zone was the iconic moment, though – all those years of reading about the disaster while bored at work and then, entirely without meaning to, I’m standing in front of reactor 4 with a brain full of theoretical nuclear physics. I’m not entirely sure I’m comfortable with calling a trip to the site of a major nuclear disaster “iconic” but it’s something that had interested me for a few years and going there was certainly a major experience.

Blog posts: Ukraine

Iceland 2011

Me on a totally white background - well, there's a mountain but it's all thick snow and the sky is grey and you can't really see where the divide is. There's a hole in the ground behind me and I'm wearing a neon orange boilersuit with reflective stripes and a red helmet because I've just been caving.

How did I get so far without that life-changing trip to Iceland that beautiful snowy winter? First trip to Þingvellir, first trip to the Blue Lagoon, first enforced teaching of the pronunciation of Eyjafjallajökull. This trip is the one that’s defined my travel and internet life for the last decade and I don’t think there’s any better word to describe something of that magnitude than iconic.

Blog post: Ten year of Iceland

Altitude 2013

A shot straight down from a selfie stick through the lines of a paragliding wing to me and my pilot. I'm wearing neon pink ski trousers and a black jacket, with arms and legs starfished out. He's wearing a neo green ski jacket and you can't see his legs because I'm pretty much sitting on them. Directly below us, give or take a couple of hundred (or maybe thousand) feet is the ski resort of Mayrhofen.

I went to Altitude Festival three times back when I could sort-of snowboard but this is the iconic one – the one where everything fell into place and it was glorious. Even the weather was pretty good, if I remember rightly. Eddie Izzard fixed the set in the Sports Bar in the afternoon when it fell apart on everyone’s heads, and then headlined the evening shows alongside Sean Lock and John Bishop, so that was good comedy – not my personal favourites but big names, iconic names. And of course, this was the scene of my highest ever paraglide and the one I was least nervous about – my pilot had been my snowboarding instructor all week and it turns out it does make a difference to know the person you’re going to leap off a mountain with. I had plans once to get my own paragliding licence on the strength of that flight.

Blog post: Stay At Home Storytelling: My highest ever paraglide

Denmark 2012

Me on the beach at Grenen, where the Skagerak and Kattegat seas meet - or where the North Sea meets the Baltic. It's quite a triangular point of beach but there's no difference between the two seas. I'm wearing jeans rolled up with a green t-shirt with boots. Should have taken my sandals.

And finally, the trip I regard as “backpacking”. I spent about a week in Denmark, in three different cities, living out of a 45-litre backpack and getting around by train. I was used to having one firm base; two on a more adventurous trip so it felt more like backpacking than anything I’d done before, to travel around with hand luggage and have no one fixed place to stay throughout. I know, it’s not actually backpacking. I was away about six days in all, travelling by train in a northern/western European country and staying in hotels, albeit hotels so cheap that I kind of regretted two of them. But it was different to any other trips I’d done at that stage, I explored four different places, two of which are definitely a bit off the tourist trail, and I think I get to count it as iconic.

Blog posts: Backpacking Denmark