May 27 - Anchorage to Seward and First Night

May 27 – Anchorage to Seward

We were up fairly early (for us) today because Melissa had arranged for a couple of yarn shops in Anchorage to be open on a Sunday for our shopping pleasure! So, out the door by 8:30 to walk to The Quilted Raven.

To Scotty's delight, and that of her wallet, it was primarily a quilting store, with a little yarn. I picked up two skeins that had purples in them (my colorway for this trip) and the needles needed to start the hat from the kit I bought the day before at Oomingmak.

Once that was done, we were going to walk around downtown Anchorage, but a slight rain had started, so we headed back to the hotel. We spent the rest of the morning reading. Our luggage had gone away at 8AM to get ready for the train.

We gathered at 11:30 in the Holland America lounge at the Hilton to prepare for the bus. The room quickly filled with knitters and we had a great time chatting and looking at various purchases.

Took a short bus ride back to the airport, which also houses the train station. Once again, Holland America had taken care of everything, so our names were checked off a list, we presented our photo ID's, and were shown to our train car.

We had a lovely and very spacious booth on the train. The lunch menu was limited, but tasty and there was a full bar. I tried an “Alaskan Mosquito Bite” … vodka, orange and pineapple juice, and strawberry puree. YUM! Lunch was an “Italian Meat Salad”, which was a variety of salami, pepperoni, and ham on a bed of greens with Italian dressing. Pretty good, too.

Of course, the best part of the train ride was the scenery. Here are a few shots from along the way:

Looks cold, doesn't it? We did see one moose and a couple of eagles, but they wouldn't stand still for a picture! We landed in Seward in 4-5 hours. Once again, the train pulled right up to the port. We and our luggage were unloaded and we boarded the ship.

Found Kate and Mark in line to get our room key, but then didn't see them for dinner. We rushed a bit and Melissa had to work some magic with the Maitre'd because we were late getting off the train and through the line so our seating had already happened. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been a problem, but the life boat drill was coming up quickly and the staff was worried we would want a leisurely dinner and they wouldn't be able to finish serving us before the drill started. Not a problem. We were admitted anyway and dinner was magnificent. I had Pasta Putanesca. There was also an appetizer and soup, which I can't remember right now, since I've eaten twice more since then!

Standard lifeboat drill. No surprises there.

Melissa had arranged for a private cocktail party, so we headed for Crow's Nest to meet the rest of the tour group. We are quite a large group of very pleasant people. That's where we caught up with Kate and Mark and spent the bulk of the evening chatting about Houston, common friends, and life in general.

I had to get in a few turns at the slot machines, so I went off to the casino. Probably won't be doing that much any more this trip because it seems to have lost it's magnetism for me.

In bed an snoring away before midnight!