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I Am A Polar Bear

Travel, adventure & wellness with plenty of snow

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Category: Useful Iceland Maps

Where can I swim in Iceland? | iamapolarbear.com

Where can I swim in Iceland?

June 16, 2022

Another addition to the Iceland Map Hub! This shows just about everywhere you can swim in Iceland, all on a lovely map! People don’t necessarily think of Iceland as a swimming destination. Perhaps they think of the Blue Lagoon but nothing else. However, just about every settlement has a pool, the pools are almost all … More Where can I swim in Iceland?

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I found every supermarket in Iceland | iamapolarbear.com

I found every supermarket in Iceland

February 21, 2022

Consider this post the launch of my new Iceland Hub! People know me for Iceland, both on social media and in real life and although there’s so much Iceland content here, I don’t really make it as prominent as I could, so now there’s a whole pretty page dedicated to gathering it all up together in … More I found every supermarket in Iceland

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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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Most popular posts

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I went to Corfe Castle for their Halloween/half term Gruesome Tales for the Morbidly Curious (which was really good!) and while I was there, I did another thing from the Hamburg photo walk which meant trying to look at the castle a bit differently and meant I ended up with a batch of pictures that kind of show Corfe Castle in an unexpected way. "Show fragments of the church but not the whole church". Today’s blog is from 2012, a trip around the Golden Circle in Iceland’s autumn, which was more wet and grey than red and gold. I don’t have a picture of me from the Golden Circle but it’s selfie day, so this is an old favourite, making Skógafoss look freakishly enormous the day before. On the blog today, a quest for the Midnight Sun in Tromsø, which turned out to be a half-decent Ten To Midnight Sun and a couple of Midnight Glows in the Sky. I’m looking back at my 2011 trip to Norway this week and come across these pictures from Tromsø. It was my first trip to the Arctic and although it’s warm enough for sandals, the landscape wants us all to know how far north we are. The two pictures outside the Arctic Cathedral were taken 24 hours apart, from sunshine to heavy rain. There are also a couple of pictures from around Tromsø on the sunny day. On the blog today, a trip that probably hasn't seen the light of day on Instagram before because it's from 2011: the Trondheim part of my first ever visit to Norway. Today’s new blog post is the 8 things I don’t travel without - I don’t think there’s anything very revolutionary but after making shampoo bars in Reading on Saturday, it seemed like a good opportunity to show you my travel solid hair wash kit, the Julie Book of Everything and the Sacred Charging Kit. Since I’m doing snowy wintery pictures, this is actual Tromsø from two trips I did in 2016 and 2017. Looking at the pictures, I definitely had better weather in 2017 but I did have a glorious and beautiful day sailing up from Harstad on the Hurtigruten in 2016. On today’s blogs, the polar bear is being a polar bear because as winter approaches, I’m thinking about the Northern Lights. I have a Northern Lights success rate of three in eleven - three times I’ve seen something worth seeing for eleven long nights of standing in the cold (plus one accidental at a campsite in Akranes one September when I was expecting no such thing and wearing sandals). But I do have a 100% success rate at Tromsø - well, two out of two.

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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