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I Am A Polar Bear

Travel, adventure & wellness with plenty of snow

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  • About Me
  • Travel
    • By country
      • Nordic & Scandinavian
        • Denmark
        • Finland
        • Iceland
        • Norway
          • Svalbard
        • Sweden
      • Western Europe
        • Belgium
        • France
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        • Italy
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          • Scotland
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      • Central Europe
        • Austria
        • Czechia
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      • Eastern Europe
        • Estonia
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        • Latvia
        • Lithuania
        • Romania
        • Russia
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      • 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
        • West Bohemian Spa Triangle (2026)
        • The Original Spa (2025)
        • Great German Spa Towns (2025)
      • Short Breaks
        • Winter in Helsinki (2026)
        • The Romanian Do-Over (2025)
        • A Short Trip to Pula (2025)
      • 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

Videos

My YouTube channel so far. I’m always planning to make more but I’m spectacularly awkward in front of the camera so I don’t do it as often as I’d like.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/embed?listType=playlist&list=UUVuWf7agr1s6FkyXZkiax3g&layout=gallery%5B/embedyt%5D

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?
  • A swimwear day at Friedrichsbad, Baden-Baden
  • I tried Emser Therme's naked riverside sauna
  • How to visit and explore Brijuni National Park from Pula
  • The Guide Camp Kit List part two: the camp blanket
🇨🇿 Day five on the West Bohemian Spa Triangle and I’m on the move again - a morning in Františkovy Lázně’s parkland and then onto two trains to my third town, Karlovy Vary. 🇨🇿 Day four: an alarm at 7am for breakfast, packing and then walking the 2.5km in unexpected 0° (but very warm for the temperature!) to the station. 🇨🇿 Day three of the West Bohemian Spa Triangle and this is my day in Mariánské Lázně, which started very prosaically with a 1.76km hike down the big Czech Tesco. Day two on the West Bohemian Spa Triangle… Day one of the great West Bohemian Spa Triangle train adventure! If I’m putting it on Instagram, I feel like I have to have something to say, so I have to do some writing. This time tomorrow, I’ll either be in a passport control queue or searching for a bus stop and then first thing on Tuesday, I’ll be getting on a train and going off on an adventure! My itinerary says six trains in six days, which isn’t so bad and the bits in between should be nice. 🇳🇴 I just finished my Norwegian course and I won’t be sad to get my Wednesday evenings back! I’ve been learning Norwegian on and off, by myself, for the best part of a decade so I wasn’t sure if beginners module 1 was the best place to start. But a real human native-speaker teacher is invaluable and I’ve acquired a very unexpected vocabulary from it. Postcards from London the weekend before last.

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.

Blog at WordPress.com.
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