A Little About Those Cities

Since some of you asked  (well you actually DID), we spent a few days in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada before boarding our ship for the inland passage cruise and few days in Anchorage, Alaska, USA after leaving our ship.  Vancouver is expensive if you want to eat at any nice restaurants or stay downtown, and since I come from the rural woods, we went with expensive.  The city is nestled against the back of of high mountains.  It is a temperate rain forest climate and rained most of the time we were there, unfortunately.  Weather was a tiny bit chilly as well.  Note the traffic sign below shows a bicycle path! (You have to click on the photo, perhaps.)

We got a "great" (see below) view from our expensive hotel...not expensive enough I guess for a real city view.

But we were only walking distance (in the rain) from our hotel to many restaurants...most with higher price tags.  There also were several reasonably priced places.  Thai food (hubby's favorite) is EVERYWHERE.

Anchorage, smaller in population, sophistication and expenses is a very simple square city to drive around.  Although there are just enough streets that dead end or are one way that make you be sure you have a map.

Just in case you forget that at least 8 months of the year it is hard to do anything outside in Alaska the sign above reminds you.

 Clearly Anchorage survives on tourism with at least two if not three cruise ships coming in each week and an endless supply of planes.

Gwennie's is a popular place for breakfast and has been just outside of town for decades.  Certainly a colorful place that lets you know you are in Alaska.  HUGE breakfasts, so be prepared.

And everyone has a story and something to sell.  The man on the far left is a film photographer and I paid $20 for a handful of nice photos as he was such a delightful "codger" it was money well spent.  We bought the other gentleman's book about dog sledding.  He was involved and raced in the very first Iditarod.  I have not had time to read his book!

And just outside the city and down by the river we discovered that the salmon were running!