Went to Gwennie’s for our first breakfast and our first taste of Reindeer sausage. My Spanish professor from Michigan told me that Gwennie’s would change the way I viewed brunch forever. However, my experience wasn’t quite as life-changing as I had hoped. Reindeer sausage was fantabulously tasty (with a nice spicy kick) but not exactly the LSD-type, mind-altering experience that I was hoping for.
The rest of the day, we walked around downtown Anchorage. The more we walked, the less I liked it. We went to the Saturday market (that was open on Saturday and Sunday) with a rather weak showing of stalls and goods. We got to taste some fun jams, syrups and honey (fireweed honey!) but the lady at the stall was really rude, so we decided not to buy anything from her. A couple days later, we heard from one of our guides that the local Alaskans found the market to be a big joke and an awful tourist trap. We also did other pretty staple Anchorage activities – salmon viewing at the Ship Creek Salmon Viewing Platform, a short hike on the Tony Knowles coastal trail, and a visit to the Ulu Factory where they manufacture the famous Alaskan ulu knife.
Actually, a good part of our day was spent fretting and planning our Great Alaska Voyage. Originally, we were going to use Anchorage as our base, but a day and a half in Anchorage was dull enough… I couldn’t imagine spending anymore time there. I had my heart set on spending time in Seward, AK, for the Fourth of July. There was a big race (3.1 miles up Mt Marathon) going on that day and I wanted to partake in the festivities. Unfortunately, poor planning on our part meant that every single hotel and hostel was fully occupied. After calling about 20 to 30 places, we found a few options:
1) Hostel where we had to BYO sleeping bag
2) Melody Inn where we had to stay three nights (one night longer than we wanted)
3) Couch surfing with this really nice friendly dude
4) An igloo we found off Craig’s List
Obviously, we went for the igloo. Hah hah. Not really. Thankfully we sorted ourselves out and went to celebrate at a staple Alaskan beer institution - Humpy’s. Rather, I celebrated at Humpy’s and dragged my little sis along with me. I had my first Alaskan brewed raspberry wheat beer and a blackened salmon filet meal. Apparently we had stumbled onto someone’s farewell party – a whole bunch of dudes were dressed in Hawaiian shirts (one in a bikini) and getting kinda rowdy by the live band. Some old airforce men from Georgia ending up paying for our meal (for no reason at all). Haha.
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