Anchorage

We wake up around 8:30-9:00am. We organize ourselves and plan to go down to the "lobby" to have the free breakfast. Turns out that it is based on shrink-wrapped muffins and coffee. Since we are hungry (didn't have dinner the night before) we decide to search for a breakfast place.

The map has a nearby bakery/cafe. Roy navigates there, we find that it is closed on Sunday. Roy check the maps and announces that he sees a place that has breakfast everyday. We go there, passing many closed stores and restaurants, and find that it opens at 10. It is 9:40.... We open the tour book and it recommends the "best breakfast place in town" few blocks away. We go there, and find that there is an hour and half wait. We go back, check another place, which doesn't look promising, and in the end decide to schlep back to the 10am place which by now should be open. This is a fancy restaurant with very charming and professional staff, and we have a big breakfast. Roy attacks a large Huevus Rancheros dish and large hot chocolate with a
huge amounts of whipped cream.

Now that we are not hungry anymore we consider our next steps. We decide to check out the weekend market that is one block east of us. It is a nice market, with lots of people selling crafts --- photographs, native Alaskan knives, fur hats, native jewelry, and such. In addition there were food booths (we could have had breakfast there...) and a singer with an off-key guitar. After strolling in the Market for a while, we got the idea and decided to go on.

Our next stop was ship-creek. This is a stream running through town, and was the original site of the town. Now its in the middle of an industrial area, but still people come here to fish for salmon.

We went down to see the phenomena. There were all kinds of people with weird boots and fishing rods trying to catch salmon. Some of them even succeeded.

There were many birds about, and here started our fascination with bird photography (many more later on in this trip...)

We went in a loop around the creek and got to a small waterfall, where the salmon were supposed to be jumping. We sat on the stream bank waiting patiently, and saw the salmon gathering before the fall, but they didn't jump :-( Apparently they too didn't work on sunday.

We walk back up the hill to downtown to the Anchorage History & Art museum. There is a debate whether we want to go in, but at the end we decide to do it. There is a very nice atrium with a coffee-shop, and so we take a break with cookies and drinks. The museum has a big exhibit on the history of alaska (which was pretty interesting), many nature photographs, and also an exhibit on the life style of the natives. The last one was pretty interesting. For example, we learned that the eskimos made rain-gear by sewing seal-intestine membrane. They also used that stuff to make windows. It looks like Pergamon paper but is very durable and waterproof.

We strolled to the visitor center to hear about the things we should have reserved in advance. We then decide to take a walk on the nature trail next to the sea. This is a very nice trail that serves joggers, hikers, bike riders, and skateboarders. For unclear reasons we didn't rent a bike, and instead walked a part of it.

We ended up next to a very nice lake. We stopped there for a break, and then decided to turn back and walk to the hotel.

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