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I Am A Polar Bear

Travel, adventure & wellness with plenty of snow

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Tag: Glasgow

Me-time in Glasgow | iamapolarbear.com

Me-time in Glasgow

January 21, 2019

Is this a post about my weekend in Glasgow in July or is it a post about traveller’s guilt? I don’t know. I went to Glasgow in July and although I did do some things, mostly I sat in my lovely flat, reading books and eating toast and lying in the bath. I don’t feel … More Me-time in Glasgow

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Glasgow apartment title pic

My Glasgow apartment

August 6, 2018

Last month I went to Glasgow for the weekend. Poor impulse control following a week in which I was tired and my foot hurt and I went chasing a friendly face. I went looking for somewhere to stay and as per usual, despite my loathing for them, I went for booking.com and found an apartment … More My Glasgow apartment

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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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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. It’s blog time again (link in bio, you know how this works) and today’s is “my favourite travel watch is my twelve-year-old self’s dream”, aka a Baby G. It’s waterproof, indestructible, it lights up, it has a world clock mode that saves me having to reset it every time I leave the country… and occasionally the strap might fall apart. I like the idea of a smartwatch but I also like a) not worrying about charging my watch every few days b) being able to swap it for different occasions without feeling like I’m wasting its smartness. Watches that aren’t mini supercomputers have kind of fallen out of favour but I like them and I think you should too. Today was the Big Gig, which is exactly what it sounds like with the additional fact that it’s a Girlguiding-only event - 10,000 Guides, Rangers, Young Leaders and adult volunteers packed into Wembley Arena. It was headlined by Girlguiding’s beloved Scouting for Girls and JLS, who starred in my very first Big Gig in 2008. The star for me was Kerry Ellis - now, that’s a trained voice and she had two of maybe half a dozen songs I actually knew across the whole thing. I didn’t have such a strong opinion on this a year ago but so many people on the Iceland Facebook group are desperate to tell you they’re a Better Tourist because they prefer the Sky Lagoon to the Blue Lagoon that I had to write a blog post detailing why they’re wrong.

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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