sarea | We went to "the Detroit of Alaska," aka Anchorage

ropo, ask and you shall receive! :’D Actually I was already working on this post, because I’m doing a whirlwind trip to LA and flying out tomorrow, so I can’t have YET ANOTHER trip report I need to do while still having so many on my plate. So I’m determined to finish and post this TONIGHT, even though I haven’t even packed yet!

This is my second time writing this post, because the internets ate the first one, and I know you all know how demoralizing losing a really long post can be. :/ It’s never as good as the first time, and you feel like you’re just repeating yourself and having to tell the same stories over and over. It sucks. But I lost the post weeks ago, and despite reaching out to Dreamwidth for help, I have heard nothing in response. So I guess I just have to rewrite it. *cries inside*

Day One

Why did

adelagia and I choose Anchorage? We still don’t know. Okay, that’s slightly a lie. We trudged to the airport in a kind of daze, neither of us really looking forward to the trip. Which feels terrible, lol. I mean, when you’re going on a vacation, and you’ve paid for the privilege, you should be excited about it! You should be able to anticipate all the fun you’re about to have! But I guess that was part of the problem… we had deliberately chosen Anchorage because it wouldn’t be too much fun, lol. It was supposed to be a "work" (writing) trip, and we had wanted to go to a place that was a) close-ish; b) cheap-ish; and c) not so interesting that we would get distracted by all the fun stuff to do and not do any writing.

Anyway, our flight was just before 10 a.m., and we got to the airport in plenty of time. I can never time it just right. I don’t want to be late and be rushing around, but neither do I want to sit around for a really long time, though the latter is usually what happens, sigh. The flight was uneventful. I watched Three Identical Strangers, which I found kind of boring. The subject matter wasn’t boring, but I felt like it was telling me stuff I already knew (much like writing this post… for the second time). I think the problem was that

jade_okelani had given too good of a rundown of the movie; I felt like I had seen it before! Adelagia watched I Can Speak, which I had recced from having seen it during one of my last business flights. Lee Je-hoon is in it, and he’s kind of a poor man’s Kim Soo-hyun (at least with regard to looks). ;)

We decided to go to Jinmi immediately for lunch, taking our bags with us, since it was technically too early to check into our Airbnb. We took a Lyft from the airport, and had a really nice/friendly driver, who gave us a rec for Glacier Brewhouse, which we would end up going to twice during our stay. Only, when we got there, the restaurant was closed! WTF? It was during their business hours, though? The Lyft driver mentioned that he had driven someone else there once, and the same thing had happened. He speculated that the place had closed, but I’m not sure that’s the case. It didn’t have any signs saying such, and Yelpers are generally pretty good about letting people know when a restaurant has closed – there was nothing like that on their Yelp page. Very odd.

Anyway, so thus thwarted, we ended up going to the Airbnb after all, thinking we could at least drop off our bags if it wasn’t ready… but it was! It was actually a really nice little ground-floor apartment. Very spacious and cute. Our host, Charlene, also seemed super friendly and nice. (We had told her we were there to write a book, but at the time we hadn’t come up with a plot yet. So I made up something about a young adult urban fantasy with dystopian elements, and she brought it up several times, saying that she wanted to read it. Me too, Charlene, me too.)

One of my favorite signs near the apartment. Is it a statement or a plea?

For lunch we went to Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, where I felt we were met by some less-than-friendly locals who had never seen an Asian person before. We split two sandwiches: pork and pickles, and prosciutto. The latter sandwich ended up being really good! I realized that the spread on it was simply butter, and now I’m like, prosciutto and butter sandwiches are delicious! We also split a chocolate cookie thing that was good because it wasn’t too sweet, but was somewhere between soft and crunchy, so it wasn’t the greatest texture.

After lunch we stopped by the New Sagaya City Market, which was kind of a boutique grocery, in order to see about getting some groceries for the upcoming days (including jjajangmyeon, which I was totally exciting to cook!). But as expected, the prices were high and the selection not really all that, so we decided to go to Walmart later that evening… it was one of those super big ones that had a grocery store in it. However, when we got back to the apartment, Charlene came by and said she was making a run to Fred Meyer; did we want to come? It seemed churlish to refuse, so we agreed. We found pretty much everything we needed while we were there, so that was convenient.

Charlene told us some background about herself, including the fact that she used to live in the Seattle area. She and her husband usually spent the winter in Arizona, and in Anchorage they lived close to a lake. Sounded like a pretty cushy situation. She also told us a funny anecdote about how people in Alaska called the rest of the U.S. "outside," and she was once asked if she ever went outside. Her response was, "Well of course I go outside." LOL! Adelagia and I had also encountered people saying "the lower 48" by then as well. However, it was good to know that WE WERE FROM THE OUTSIDE. (Sounds like something from Stranger things.)

For dinner we went to Moose’s Tooth, but practically everyone in Anchorage was there and we had about an hour wait. To kill some time we walked to Walmart, which was not too far from the restaurant, and got some remaining supplies that we wanted. By the time we got back, we didn’t have too much longer to wait, thankfully. The pizza there ended up being surprisingly good! We got half Pepperoni Supreme and half Brewhouse Favorite, and also a whole one of The Forager. My favorite was the Brewhouse Favorite, because I thought the spicy sausage with the Denali Sauce (puree of spinach and ricotta) was very good, and Adelagia’s favorite was the Pepperoni Supreme. They were all good, though. It was pizza I would happily eat anywhere, not just in Anchorage due to not having many other options, lol.

Something happened with one of the servers that annoyed me. We had discovered that the plates our waitress had brought was still crusted with pizza – it hadn’t been washed well. But we didn’t realize this until after our pizza arrived, which meant that they were getting colder and colder while we waited in vain for someone to notice that we needed assistance. (One of my biggest pet peeves is my food getting cold.) Finally, I felt I had no choice but to flag down a waiter who I had seen serving a nearby table. I knew he was likely not our waiter, but he was the only person around so I had no choice! I figured he could at least pass on the message to our server if this were the sort of place where they strictly delineated which tables were served by which servers. Anyway, I politely (and nicely) asked, "When you get a chance, could we get some new plates?" To which he gave me a frazzled look and held up a bunch of receipt holder thingys, saying that he was busy with that. That response already rubbed me the wrong way. AT NO POINT did I say he had to help us immediately!! I knew he was busy, and I even knew he was probably not our server! He could have simply said that he would let our server know or something – not respond so snippily, in a way that had no relevance to what I had asked or how I had asked it. More and more time passed, while the pizza got colder and colder, and I was soooooooooo irritated by this point. Had ANY OTHER SERVER – OR BUS BOY – happened by during this time, I would have asked again for plates, but no one came, so we still had to depend on the first guy. To his credit, he did bring new plates, though he basically slammed them down onto the table and then left without another word. So fucking rude. Like instead of giving me attitude, GIVE IT TO THE SERVER WHO’S SUPPOSED TO BE SERVICING OUR TABLE. Tell her we need help! If you’re going to be a dick, and don’t want us to be your problem, just do that instead! Sheesh. However, this was the first of several experiences in Alaska where I felt that the person we were asking a favor of responded to a request as though I were asking them to drop everything and take care of my needs. So bizarre.

Day Two

The next day we did an Anchorage mobile-based scavenger hunt. I was the "team lead," while Adelagia was the "team photographer." It was a really fun way to get to know the city, even if it wasn’t really that fun or interesting a city to get to know, lol. It made us walk around downtown Anchorage a bunch, though, where we encountered about six different tourist shop chains, all carrying the same stuff at varying prices (all too high). One of the places it led us to was to this place overlooking the water, and we could (supposedly) see the tip of Denali from it, because it was a clear day. Some people there even lent us their binoculars and excitedly pointed it out, but neither Adelagia nor I could really make it out. If the tip of Denali looks like a bunch of trees, then sure, I saw it.

In the midst of this excursion, we came across a couple of street vendors selling reindeer dogs! So despite the fact that we had to eat lunch in about an hour, we decided to go for it, because we weren’t sure if we’d be back in the downtown area again. The reindeer (or caribou, as I found out later) dog was good, but… basically a hot dog. I thought it might have a gamey flavor but it didn’t. Probably the process of making it into a hot dog neutralizes any interesting flavor it might’ve once had.

We carried on with the scavenger hunt until it was time for our lunch reservation at Club Paris. Charlene had recommended it to us the evening before (asking us to join her and her husband, but we declined), on account of their steak sandwich. This was instance #2 of someone in Anchorage being weird. We were a bit early, so I went to the hostess stand to check us in, and the gal seemed aggrieved, saying that she would seat us as soon as she could, but not right then. And again I was like, I’M NOT ASKING TO BE SEATED RIGHT THIS SECOND. I PREFACED OUR INTERACTION BY SAYING I REALIZED WE WERE EARLY! Sheeeeeeeeeeesh. Anyway, once we were seated, we ordered the recommended steak sandwich as well as the prime rib dip that was on their specials menu that day. Oh man, the prime rib dip was so good! Adelagia found the regular steak sandwich too salty, and while I didn’t have that issue, it wasn’t as good as the prime rib dip. Still, a pretty satisfying lunch, I must say.

After lunch we went to Wild Scoops, where a new girl on her first day cheated me out of a full-size ice cream, GRRRRR. YES I’M STILL BITTER ABOUT IT. I got the Sitka Swirl (basically salted caramel) and Adelagia got Thai Tea. The Sitka Swirl was similar to the way Salt & Straw makes it, where it’s salted ice cream with caramel swirl, so it was good – I wanted to be more adventurous, but none of the other flavors really appealed to me. Anyway, I had ordered a single scoop – and was charged for one – but the girl only gave me a kiddie-size scoop. Compared to Adelagia’s, it was tiny!! But I really hate being one of those people who are like, "Um, you gave her a bigger scoop than you gave me," but afterward I super regretted holding myself back. It was gone in like three bites. GRRRRRRRR. I was too bitter to take any photographs.

Dinner that night was homemade jjajangmyeon! I did not fully realize it that night, but there was something the matter with our stove, or the cooking utensils, or SOMEthing. We would realize it in the coming days, because it was basically impossible to cook something on it without it either taking forever or burning, but that night I didn’t really realize it. So it was kind of a miracle that the jjajangmyeon came out edible, though the sauce was too salty (that might be the recipe).

Day Three

We decided to do another outdoor outing before the bad weather rolled in, so we went to take a nice walk along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. It’s a really long trail, so there are several entrances to it. We Lyfted to the one in downtown Anchorage and began our walk.

A cute sign near the beginning of our walk.

It was very beautiful, and we saw lots of water and mountains and some animals on our right side, while on our left we’d see like neighborhood playgrounds and millionaire cul-de-sacs and such. It was odd. But yeah, super gorgeous. I mean these are my iPhone images with no filters on.

We had lunch reservations at Glacier Brewhouse, but since we had seen plenty of opportunity to step out at any time to catch a Lyft, we didn’t really worry about it. What we did worry about was the fact that we had not seen a single moose. We had been promised moose, and yet we had been in Alaska for three days and been to like, two whole places, and had yet to encounter a moose. There were signs warning you about what to do if you encountered a moose and how not to make it angry, but no advice on what to do if you did make it angry. As Adelagia put it, "Presumably this is because once you’ve upset the moose you might as well just lie down and accept your trampling." :)))))))))) We also joked like we were John Mulaney in one of his standup routine jokes about not seeing animals at the zoo: "Tell them we’re here."

However, as we walked further, the moose jokes stopped as civilization seemed to fall away, and suddenly there were no more "exits." We didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t turn back, because the last "exit" we saw was awhile back, so we kept going, further and further into a forest it seemed, hoping to come across another "exit" where we could take our leave. I still had fantastic cell reception so I knew we couldn’t be that far from civilization, but the only thing I could do with that was to push out our reservation on OpenTable, lol. The longer we walked, the more we griped. Where were the signs! What if people needed to use the bathroom, or had some kind of medical emergency! (I was pretty hungry by this point, and declared the fact that my stomach was about to eat itself a medical emergency.) At some point, we started encountering other people – especially people who did NOT look like they were out for a long trek (a lady with a fancy purse and a wrap, for instance). That gave us some hope that perhaps we were near an entrance/exit. Then we found him. Our savior. He didn’t know he was saving us, but he did. It was just a regular guy, his jacket held bunched in one hand. He looked determined. He wasn’t on a stroll; he was walking purposefully. We decided to follow him, and eventually he led us out into a glorious parking lot!!! WE WERE SAVED!!! It turned out that we had walked all the way to Earthquake Park, lol. Anyway, I requested a Lyft and not too long after that, we were on our way to lunch.

Splitwise notes:

- Ride to Tony Knowles Coastal Trail: $8.56
- Rescue vehicle from Tony Knowles Coastal Trail: $15.94

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one more traveled by,
And that made all the difference.

Glacier Brewhouse had a really cool, relaxing vibe, was very spacious, and had high ceilings. I liked it a lot. The food wasn’t bad either, though given how hungry I had been, it was surprising I didn’t eat more than I did. We ordered fish and chips, a side of asparagus, fried calamari (the fat strips I like best!), and a salmon BLT. I couldn’t even touch the BLT, I was so full. The shocking thing is that Adelagia, who usually eats less than me, ATE ALL OF HER SHARE!! Who… what… did that reindeer imbue her with magical eating abilities?! It was crazy! She just kept going! WHO DID I HAVE LUNCH WITH THAT DAY?? Maybe it was being lost in the forest, or the near-trampling by invisible moose, but Adelagia summoned her will to SURVIVE, some part of her knowing that she might need those extra calories to live off of.

Anyway, we also consumed extra calories in the form of root beer floats. Glacier Brewhouse makes its own root beer, but bizarrely there’s no root beer float on the menu. I decided to ask about it anyway, because if they have root beer, and they have ice cream – then duh. They were able to do it for us, but weirdly they put the drinks into these large mugs and only filled it about halfway with root beer. Seriously, do you need to be so chintzy with it? (We later found out that due to the ice cream, ostensibly, they didn’t use the same glasses they normally serve the root beer in. But still, I don’t think they used the same amount soda, or even if they did, GIVE US A LITTLE EXTRA SO THEY DON’T LOOK HALF EMPTY. Sheesh.)

While eating, I spied a woman having Alaskan King Crab (though they call it Bering Sea King Crab there), one of my favorite kinds of seafood, and it looked so yummy I told Adelagia that we should go back and have it the next day, as my treat. I justified it by saying, how often will I get to have Alaskan King Crab right in Alaska? This is the time to splurge on such an item! (I can justify just about any indulgence. If you need any help on that front, come to me.)

Also while eating, I asked about escape rooms. Adelagia had looked them up before we came, but there weren’t any that could guarantee a private room. She noted that there was actually one right there – as in, in the same building as the Glacier Brewhouse! It seemed meant to be. I said there wasn’t any harm in asking if they had any immediate openings, and if so, maybe they’d just let us play so they could make SOME money, at least. The place was called Alaska Escape Rooms, and the girl manning the front desk was very nice and helpful. She said that they did book two people, but that it would be very difficult to do. And also that they couldn’t guarantee a private party, so if we booked for a certain time, and other people did as well, we’d have to do it with them. She kept trying to convince us to do it with another 2-person booking for later that day, before she realized that we didn’t actually want to do it with others, lol. Adelagia makes a very good point – escape rooms are typically made by nerdy puzzle lovers, for other nerdy puzzle lovers, most of whom are likely introverts. Why don’t any of them understand that people don’t want to do shit with strangers?!?! Anyway, the girl said that while she couldn’t guarantee us a private event, she could tell us that mealtimes and first thing in the morning were our best bet for avoiding other people booking those slots, so Adelagia and I decided to return first thing the next morning and roll the dice.

Dinner that night was leftover jjajangmyeon!

Day Four

Success! We showed up for the 10am slot and it wasn’t taken, so we got to do the escape room, "Raven’s Eye," with just us. Hurrah. It was surprisingly good. We both enjoyed it very much!! Maybe our expectations were low, but it had fun puzzles with varying levels of difficulty, and I liked that there was a puzzle-within-a-puzzle element, which we hadn’t seen before. (Basically, your main objective is to escape the room. But you could also choose to "save Abigail," the girl who’s been kidnapped, as a secondary objective. However, if you save her but don’t escape, you don’t win.) What I didn’t like so much was the super long and boring backstory they made us watch at the beginning, with a guy who was talking through a voice modulator so it was hard to understand him on top of being interminably long. (Also, it was cute but one of the things the girl said at the beginning – which led to my lower expectations – was that "unlike other escape rooms," theirs had multiple rooms. In my head I was like, "Um, we’re from OUTSIDE, most of the escape rooms we do have multiple rooms, god.")

We didn’t end up escaping the room in the allotted time, but because there wasn’t another party after us, she gave us an extra 10-15 min and we were able to get out then. She seemed legitimately impressed that we had done as well as we did with only two people – I can only assume that the people who have done it before were total dunderheads. :/

Despite spending extra time there, we were going to be an hour early for our lunch reservations at Snow City Café. I called them and said that I had reservations at 12:30, but would it be possible to potentially seat us early? I’ll let you guess how they responded. That’s right, with the same Alaskan defensiveness I had gotten from like every service person there. They said that they would try, but it probably wouldn’t be possible, etc. All again with that tone of "Wow, you’re really putting me on the spot here," even though I had once again prefaced my request as gently and non-demandingly as possible, so that they would know *I* knew I was asking for a favor, and would be fine with any outcome. Sigh.

To kill some time, we went looking for a coffeeshop (okay, it was Starbucks, we were looking for a Starbucks), but ended up at Captain Cook’s, a swanky hotel (for Anchorage). There we went to Sweet Chalet, which we had previously said we would not go to, because they sold expensive hand-painted chocolates that were gorgeous to look at, but which were, ultimately, just chocolates. We said we would just go in and look… but of course each ended up buying something. LOL. Whatever, when in Anchorage, you know? We’d never be back, probably, so why not just try it once?

Snow City Café has amazing reviews, and is constantly busy, but honestly, the food was only okay. People raved about the hash browns; they were fine. I wouldn’t go out of my way to get these. They also raved about the stuffed French toast, which was good, but not great. I also got a half chicken BLT that was less than good. Adelagia got the Deadliest Catch Eggs Benedict, which was with one salmon cake and one crab cake – also, she says, fine. The thing that was standout good was the coffee – surprisingly so. It was made from espresso by local roasters Kaladi Bros.

After that we headed back to the apartment to write and watch some TV. We’d been watching Prison Playbook on Netflix, and also tried out a couple of Korean movies -- The Bros, which as soon as it seemed like there might be a ghost, Adelagia had us move on from, and Bluebeard, which starred Jo Jinwoong. It was a bizarre movie, which most Korean movies are. I don’t know why they have to be so weird, or so "thought provoking" – so they think. Basically I try to stay away from Korean movies that aren’t comedies. There have been a few exceptions to the rule, where a drama has been good, but they are rare.

ANYWAY, for dinner we went back to Glacier Brewhouse for the Alaskan King Crab and more root beer! Woot woot! We got that to split, as well as the Alaskan nachos, and I had thought that would be just the right amount of food. But we weren’t actually able to finish the nachos, as the crab legs also came with asparagus and ancient grains risotto, which was actually better than it sounds, even if not better than, you know, actual risotto. The crab was also good, but cooled too quickly. And, if I’m honest, was also not any better than the ones I’ve gotten from Costco. Which makes me feel better about splurging from time to time on those, lol. (Later I learned from somewhere, can’t remember where, that Alaska exports so much of its seafood that there’s not much good stuff left at home. How crazy is that?! So yeah, apparently I can get good-if-not-better King Crab legs from Costco. ><)

Day Five

We had timed our outings perfectly, because our last full day was gloomy and rainy and cold, perfect weather for staying in and writing/watching stuff on TV. Which is what we did. We mostly ate leftovers (repurposing some into "new" meals, like adding stuff to ramen) and the Sweet Chalet chocolates (as expected, they were just chocolate, and we aren’t connoisseurs in that regard).

Flavors: Caramelized pear and saffron; mango passionfruit pate de fruit; yuzu dark chocolate; lavender ganache dark chocolate; milk and dark chocolate-covered pretzels (not pictured).

Day Six

Super early the next morning, we left the apartment after doing everything we could to tidy things up and not leave Charlene with a bunch of things to clean. (Later, she would tell me that there was hardly anything for her to do after we left since we had been so clean. Which was nice to hear. Then she told me that I had forgotten my hot pink portable hair dryer. Sigh. She offered to mail it to me, but of course I wouldn’t have let her foot that cost, and I didn’t think it was worth the trouble or the money to do so, so I told her to keep it for her future guests.)

We arrived back in Seattle around 12:30 p.m.; we didn’t know prior to going there that Alaska had its own time zone, lol (it’s an hour behind us). We did like no research before going there, clearly. And for the record, we didn’t see as much daylight as I had assumed. While it did look like dusk around 10:30 p.m., it was definitely dark by midnight, and our rooms had blackout curtains so I didn’t even need the sleep mask that I had brought just in case.

Since it was lunchtime and we were hungry, we decided to go to Blue Ginger. Adelagia got the naengmyeon, while I got some spicy variation of galbitang. We also ordered some kind of raw fish thing that wasn’t what we were expecting; it was covered in the usual Korean hot pepper paste mixture, when we had been imagining something more like sashimi, but the weirder thing was that there was cartilage and Adelagia did not like the texture. We also found out that it was a delicacy where the fish was marinated in its own urine, but that didn’t bother her as much as the texture, lol. So I ended up eating most of it and taking it home!