Alaskan Vacation: Anchorage

I think I neglected to mention (or perhaps I didn't) that we elected to do a cruise-tour vacation package through Princess Cruise Lines. What this basically means is that we booked ourselves to go on both a cruise of Alaska and a tour to cover the land portion of our trip. Often people don't realize that many of the well-known Alaskan towns are islands (Juneau, Ketchikan, Skagway) thus they are impossible to reach by land. Further, other towns, (Denali/McKinley and Anchorage) are impossible to reach by sea so, to get the full experience, we did both land and sea. Perfect!

After our brief stay in San Francisco we landed in Anchorage (and retrieved our luggage, which arrived the day before we did). We immediately headed off to book ourselves a hotel; we had been traveling for about two days, hadn't really changed our clothes, and we were struggling with the four-hour time difference.  If you remember correctly we hadn't booked ourselves a hotel in Anchorage because we feared we would miss our connector flight (which we did). Our tour didn't officially start until July 2nd, so we had yet another day to kill until we were whisked away on the pre-paid portion of our vacation. We found the least expensive hotel we could book (after of course, I consulted the bed-bug registry). This hotel was quite comical and had very interesting... character.

Let me just say that I wouldn't recommend the hotel if you're looking for luxury. We were looking for something cheap, as we planned to go immediately to sleep, and we were due to check into our 5-star hotel in downtown Anchorage early the next morning when our tour officially started. This hotel was the kind of place where you'd expect to get a knock on the door by "C.S.I." Okay, so I'm exaggerating, it wasn't that bad but, we don't often stay in hotels (we opt for B&B's or rent small houses) so this place was a bit dodgy (and the bed folded out of the wall!)

I have to admit; one of the strangest things about Alaska was the position it is on the earth. Because of its location, the month of June/July gets about 21 hours of daylight. The other 3 hours are twilight. It NEVER gets dark. Ever. You can literally read a book outside 24-hours per day. So, on top of being a New England native AND the 4 hour time change, it was really weird trying to sleep in broad day light at midnight!! That took some getting used to.

We had a lot of fun exploring Anchorage, Alaska's biggest city (boasting a smaller population than many of the bigger New Hampshire towns.) One thing that really struck me was the size/quality of the flowers/greenery; I can't even begin to explain how beautiful the foliage is there. Due to the amount of glacial ice melting, creating a significant amount glacial silt in the soil (read: really high levels of nitrogen [the main ingredient in Miracle Grow]) plus add almost 24 hours of sunlight/photosynthesis, the flowers and greenery are giant sized. It really was something to see. On one of our tours the guide said, "we just grow our flowers really big here because we want to make tourists feel badly." The average size of a cabbage is about 20 lbs. (!!)

We did all sorts of touristy things in Anchorage: Went to an enormous farmers market/craft fair, ate way too much, went sight seeing (toured the Ulu Factory, and the start line of the iditarod) and walked and walked and walked.

The hotel associated with the tour portion of Anchorage was the Hotel Captain Cook (I accidentally kept calling it Captain Hook) and let me tell you, it was luxurious! It was the kind of hotel that has those gorgeous bathrobes for you to wear! As a matter of fact, when any celebrities come to town they always book themselves in the Capt. Cook. Everything about that hotel was AMAZING!

One of the highlights (for me) in Anchorage was Humpy's. Now, the food was amazing but, the main reason I wanted to go there was because it was yet another stop on the trail of Adam Richman (Man Vs Food [my boyfriend xo])!

Anchorage was such a cool city. It was so strange to think that it is the biggest city in the State of Alaska yet smaller than the city I currently live in! The people were so accommodating and the city was so clean; it just really felt like another world. We were there a total of 2+ days before we were whisked away to the McKinley Princess Lodge!