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I Am A Polar Bear

Travel, adventure & wellness with plenty of snow

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Category: Travel

A Disney-hater's day at Disneyland Paris | iamapolarbear.com

A Disney-hater’s day at Disneyland Paris

May 23, 2017

Last week I went camping in northern France with my sister and we had to go to Disneyland Paris. This was not my choice or indeed my preference. I first went to Disneyland Paris on a school trip in the summer of 2000 when it was a novelty and also when Disney-mania was not quite … More A Disney-hater’s day at Disneyland Paris

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Photoset: Tromsø 2017

May 16, 2017

It’s May and the sun is shining so when better for a photoset of some of my favourite pictures from Tromsø in February. Tromsø is easily the most photogenic place I’ve ever been and I put so many of them on Instagram for so long that I couldn’t imagine sharing this photoset in any shape other than … More Photoset: Tromsø 2017

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Tromsø 2017: the cable car

April 25, 2017

I’ve done two posts about my short trip to Tromsø back in February – one about searching for the Northern Lights and one about going out snowshoeing. This post is about my trip up the cable car. Tromsø is over two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle. This means the days can be short or … More Tromsø 2017: the cable car

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In which I meet the Bears of Bern

April 13, 2017

I went to Bern, very briefly, as a student during my year abroad. I remember virtually nothing except that it was a hot day. While staying in Grindelwald recently, it seemed like the ideal choice for a day out – less than an hour from Interlaken, one of the big cities and it fitted the … More In which I meet the Bears of Bern

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Travel tips: travelling as a solo female

April 6, 2017

One of the things I hear most often (heard most often; it drops off when you reach your thirties and people have had seven or eight years to get used to it) as a person travelling alone in possession of both an X and a Y chromosome is You’re so brave! And of course, as … More Travel tips: travelling as a solo female

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Another look at Kleine Scheidegg

April 1, 2017

I’m going back to work on Mondays from next Monday, having worked Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday since Christmas, so I celebrated my last long weekend with a quick trip away. Prices for flights and accommodation to/in Iceland remaining obstinately high despite me checking two or three times a day, I resorted to looking at various local-ish airports on … More Another look at Kleine Scheidegg

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Norway 2017: A snowshoeing triumph

March 25, 2017

I don’t know what it is about snowshoeing that has such a hold over me. I began wanting to try it when I was at the Altitude Festival in 2012 but I couldn’t fit it in my hectic schedule of snowboarding lessons, paraglides off snowy Alps and long evenings of comedy. I wanted to do … More Norway 2017: A snowshoeing triumph

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Ice-climbing: harder than it looks

March 21, 2017

Ice-climbing is the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done. Harder even than extracting myself from the semi-vertical dog-leg squeeze I got wedged in at the bottom of Lionel’s Hole in the Mendips a few years ago. I was in Iceland, I was in Reykjavik and the bit of ice I was going to climb … More Ice-climbing: harder than it looks

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Photoset: Reykjavik fire hydrants

March 18, 2017

Yes, I know fire hydrants might be an odd thing to decide to do a photoset on but Reykjavik has one idiosyncrasy that I love. It has red and yellow fire hydrants scattered around the entire city and it seems to be a national pastime to draw faces on them. And I can’t resist taking … More Photoset: Reykjavik fire hydrants

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A few days in Carlisle

March 7, 2017

Back in 2009, I flew off to Carlisle for a few days – and when I say “flew”, I mean that I took the train. It’s quite a long way from Dorset (seven hours!) and even longer back because it was a Sunday and our beloved planned engineering works meant I had to make three … More A few days in Carlisle

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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.

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Postcards from London the weekend before last. I am an onion: last weekend I was swimming a mile in the Olympic pool and then climbing Tower Bridge, then I spent Wednesday teaching my Rangers to break codes, Wednesday having a Norwegian lesson, Thursday doing Brownie Promises and on Saturday I was at the opera (when I say that out loud, I over-emphasise every syllable: op-air-AAAAAH!). I tell myself I’m an Elsa (I’m actually more of an Anna) but sometimes, like when it’s -15° and I didn’t bother to put the furry leggings on under my lined trousers and I have a 15-minute scurry back to the bus before hypothermia gets me, the cold does bother me anyway. It’s not that 2026 has been so bad but it seems to have been busy and harder than normal. One of my Brownies gave me the cold from hell and that dragged on for *thirty-five days*, culminating in pulled back muscles and such incredible pain for ten days that at one point I was stranded upside down like a turtle who can’t physically turn over. I’ve also done three weeks with someone else’s Brownies as well as my own and my Rangers and I’ve got one more week of a Norwegian course that’s taken out my Wednesday evenings since late January, which feels like just one too many nights on. And work hasn’t helped - certain bits of research have been either difficult or hellish in certain countries but my boss and I have agreed a timeline for the current stuff that seems realistic to me and acceptable to him! A few pictures from Suomenlinna on a very cold February day. Helsinki was very cold, averaging about -10°C during the day but it’s also very beautiful. Today’s blog post is about my icy trip over Helsinki’s harbour to Suomenlinna and meant I had to figure out whether or not the ferry is an icebreaker. I have learned a lot about ice classes and propulsion and protection along the way, realised that the answer depends on your definition of icebreaker, picked up @horatiowrites’s Icebreaker again for bath reading and even (accidentally! I didn’t ask!) learned the word in Norwegian during my lesson yesterday. Why, yes, jeg går på nurskkurs. More on that later in the month! I didn’t have a lot booked or planned for my trip to Helsinki but I did book a sunrise swim at Allas Sea Pool, a geothermal pool floating in the harbour. Or, as I discovered when I got there, frozen into eighteen or so inches of solid ice. Did getting up at 7am to walk 1.5km at minus several degrees feel offputting? Yes! Did the run from the showers to the pool in nothing but a thin towel feel offputting? Yes! Did I then discover that my lungs attempted to close up after swimming a few lengths in the relatively warm water? Yes! I’ve spent the last nearly a week in Helsinki, where it’s averaged about -10°C during the day. I’ve tried out four different saunas & pools, discovered aqua jogging, had cloudberry juice with my breakfast, had a successful train adventure to Finland’s old capital and right now I’m in the longest queue for passport control that I’ve ever seen (taking back control, yay! /s) with a bag of korvapuusti, Finnish cinnamon rolls, in my carry on. Blogs will be coming next week - I think I’ve got four or five planned at the moment.

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 (one on a winter adventure across the Arctic Circle and one on exploring volcanoes during a warm summer road trip around Iceland) plus a little book of Icelandic pools and I have a fourth book in progress right now.

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