Skip to content

I Am A Polar Bear

Travel, adventure & wellness with plenty of snow

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Travel
    • By country
      • Nordic & Scandinavian
        • Denmark
        • Finland
        • Iceland
        • Norway
          • Svalbard
        • Sweden
      • Western Europe
        • Belgium
        • France
        • Ireland
        • Italy
        • Netherlands
        • UK
          • Scotland
          • Wales
      • Central Europe
        • Austria
        • Germany
        • Hungary
        • Poland
        • Switzerland
      • Eastern Europe
        • Estonia
        • Georgia
        • Latvia
        • Lithuania
        • Romania
        • Russia
        • Ukraine
      • Mediterranean
        • Croatia
        • Cyprus
        • Malta
    • By type
      • Daycations
      • Weekends away
        • Cheese & Chocolate (2026)
        • Parc Asterix (2025)
        • Christmas in London (2025)
      • Road Trips
        • A Birthday On the Ring Road (2025)
        • Accidental Ring Road (2023)
        • The Quest for a Volcano (2022)
      • Train Adventures
        • The Original Spa (2025)
        • Great German Spa Towns (2025)
        • The Eras Train Tour (2024)
      • Short Breaks
        • The Romanian Do-Over (2025)
        • A Short Trip to Pula (2025)
        • Reykjavik in Black & White (2024)
      • Longer Trips
        • Traversing Cyprus & Georgia (2024)
        • The Russian Odyssey (2019)
        • The Laugavegur Diaries (2018)
      • Year Abroad
      • School Trips
    • Unique Places to Stay
  • Adventures
    • Water
    • Snow
    • Land
    • Height
    • Indoors
      • Girlguiding
  • Wellness
  • YouTube

Category: Iceland Itineraries

A real Iceland itinerary | iamapolarbear.com

A real Iceland itinerary

March 28, 2022

Third in my Iceland Itinerary series is a real one, the one I plan to use next month! I haven’t been to Iceland for nearly four years and I’m very excited, and a bit nervous (I’m going on a plane!). And so this itinerary is both a blog post and me making plans. This is a week-long … More A real Iceland itinerary

Leave a comment A real Iceland itinerary
An Iceland itinerary for waterbabies | iamapolarbear.com

An Iceland itinerary for waterbabies

February 14, 2022

Oh, this is a difficult one because quite honestly, there are so many pools, spas and springs to bathe in that the only true itinerary I could give you is to take a month and just drive all the way around Iceland, stopping everywhere. Every settlement with more than about ten people living there has a … More An Iceland itinerary for waterbabies

Leave a comment An Iceland itinerary for waterbabies
A 5-day Iceland winter itinerary | iamapolarbear.com

A 5 day Iceland winter itinerary

January 20, 2022

This is another of those gap-filling things. It occurred to me that I really should have a good collection of Iceland itineraries and so this is my Iceland series for 2022: a different itinerary every month. Leave me a comment if there’s any in particular you’d like to see and if you have a deadline … More A 5 day Iceland winter itinerary

Leave a comment A 5 day Iceland winter itinerary

Posts navigation

Newer posts

Who am I?
I'm Julie, a travel, adventure and wellness blogger. I love Iceland, I love jumping into hot water and I do love a bit of snow.

  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Bluesky

Most popular posts

  • Zedwell Capsule Hotel review: what's it like to sleep in a coffin?
  • Chocolate Wars: British vs Finnish chocolate
  • How to spend a day in Budapest's Castle Hill district
  • Netflix's Katla review and local guide
  • A night bath at Rudas
While I’m doing Iceland’s spectacular blue water, I’m also going to do Iceland’s orange majesty - the time I hiked out to Meradalir to see the second Reykjanes eruption back in 2022. It’s still one of my favourite things I’ve ever done. Seeing a real life volcano is incredible - I think the highly intelligent thing I said on my first glimpse was “it’s so red and hot!” and I’d love to see another but it hasn’t worked out since (and if it never does, at least I saw this one!) ♨️ Which is the best geothermal lagoon / pool / tourist-oriented experience in Iceland? As a student I visited Chateau de Chillon and somehow managed to believe that Lord Byron wrote a famous poem about his time as a prisoner - well, he was “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. Of course he’d spent time in a Swiss dungeon. But of course, he hadn’t. He’d visited a castle while on holiday, written a poem about an actual prisoner and turned the place into one of Switzerland’s biggest tourist attractions. And I do mean big - there are 48 rooms detailing its history from Savoy to today via Bern and Lausanne, as a defensive structure, a luxury lakeside residence and yes, a tourist attraction. I was at the station in Lausanne, thinking about the old days when I lived here with my “triplets” 20 years ago and then five minutes later, one of them messaged me. This selfie, by the way, is one I took to send to her down by the lake, hence the awkward wave. Because it’s 2026, I’m calling this Switzerland in analogue instead of on film. This is the result of taking my film camera with me and actually getting through a full roll (last year, I managed 24 photos between May and December and carried that thing around far more often than I actually used it). It’s a mixed bag in which you only get to see the better ones. The blog from Thursday also features the film photos, plus a few of the nearly-terrible ones, in case there aren’t enough brown grainy pictures right here. #analogue #analog #35mmfilm This one was on the blog almost before I got back to Switzerland but it’s time it went on Instagram too. I went snowshoeing! It was in the dark, following a trail of lanterns through a snowstorm and finished up in a mountain restaurant with traditional fondue or rösti before taking the cogwheel train back down to the lake. I love cathedrals and I especially love Gothic cathedrals, so Lausanne’s was the first thing to do when I arrived. I went there as a student and didn’t appreciate it. I thought the couple of photos I took then were a bit dark but it turns out Lausanne’s 13th century cathedral really is a bit dark. It’s very beautiful and has some amazing stained glass (including some hiding right up high in the crossing!) and my only complaint is that it’s far too hot. Cathedrals tend to be cool, cold places, especially when there's a snowstorm raging outside but this one has big heating vents keeping the place at approximately sauna temperature. It took a while to decide where in Switzerland I was going to go but it was really the Hotel Swiss Chocolate in Lausanne that swayed me to Lac Leman. 🍫 This was on the blog yesterday but it gets an Instagram post too - I went to a Swiss chocolate factory and did a chocolate workshop! The actual chocolate work was very easy but I really enjoyed the little lesson on tempering chocolate while our creations set enough to take them home.

About Julie

I’m a blogger, adventurer, lover of hot water, amateur paddler and polar bear who wilts in hot weather.

Time (by day, I’m a researcher) and funds keep me within Europe and I make regular trips up to the north, especially to Iceland. I like the occasional adventure across Europe by train and I’m starting to make use of my weekends for 48-hour adventures.

This isn’t my only creative outlet – I’ve written two travelogues with a third and fourth being (not to much) written simultaneously right now.

Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • I Am A Polar Bear
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • I Am A Polar Bear
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...