Today was my first day in Fairbanks. I took this photo late last night before going to bed.

I awoke at around 8am and had breakfast. I then took the following photos from both my hotel room (the first two) and one from another window on my floor. They are a little dark as the sun had not yet risen. The black spot in the sky in the second photo is a bird flying through. I really like the steam coming from the chimney of the third photo.

After doing my laundry I headed outside for a walk with one of my cameras, down to the local Visitors Centre. The temperature was a very crisp (-) minus 19 degrees Celsius when I was leaving the hotel. I had to keep taking my glasses off as they would steam up every time I took a breath. I also had to stop for a second at each street to recall which side the cars would come from, given everyone drives on the right hand side of the road. As I wandered down the street, there was a small snow shower. Here are some snowflakes on my waterproof mittens. They lasted about 20 seconds on the mitten, or about a half second on the iPhone case.

Herewith a photo of a building with snow coming down, which can be seen between the floors of the back building. I adjusted the shutter speed to 1/10 of a second to capture this. The camera set the aperture width which may have unduly lightened the buildings and the snow on the road. Although the scene on the street was very white.

I also came across some Christmas Trees on my walk.

And a small amount of snow fell off a roof as I was walking under it.

And I came across Marilyn Monroe in a car park.

At the end of the street (my hotel is on 10th Avenue and the Visitors Centre is on 1st Avenue) is a park that the Visitor’s Centre is located in.

By the time I got here, my camera battery (and the spare – I brought one along with me)had gone flat. The cold sends batteries flat very quickly so they have to be kept warm. I was however very surprised at how quickly they were gone.one

I was able to capture a couple of panoramas on my iPhone before that battery went flat as well. The different variations in brightness can be seen across these photos. I’m going to visit a couple of museums tomorrow but also want to play around with different camera settings in this park. I’ll also spent a bit of time getting into Lightroom and Photoshop to do some further work on some of my preferred photos, but I’d really like to take as many good photos directly through the camera if I can. Without completely ruining my cameras, so will have to wrap everything up in Thermal gear this week!

After the batteries went flat, I visited the Visitors Centre to get some ideas of museums and galleries that I could visit tomorrow or next weekend – after which I went shopping!

I had a fantastic walk through snow for about 3 kilometres to get to the shopping centres I wanted to stop at. I had to go over ridges of snow, along very slippery “pathways” (not that they could be seen), and through various carparks with snow stacked high. I bought a few bits of clothing that I had waited until I got here for, and some Ice Trekkers for my shoes (chains to wear so I don’t slip over) and a few other things. By the time I had finished in Fred Meyers and Walmart, and was on my way to the Sportsmans Warehouse it was around 4.30pm, the sun had started to go down, and one of the camera batteries had enough juice for another photo. Here is a power station being used by two cars in the Walmart Superstore car park. They have a number of these power stations for staff use during winter to keep their vehicles charged. They aren’t meant to be used by others but apparently sometimes people with large RVs who camp in the car parks overnight will hook up to them.

After all that walking (I walked around 15 kilometres today), I decided on a nice Coke Zero and a Reeses Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake. The cake is around 226 gram chocolate coated cake of peanut butter. I took two bites and that was all I could eat. So the rest went in the bin. Then I had a proper liquid dinner.

Then off to the fitness centre for a workout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today was all about a train ride.

I walked to the station reasonably early (7.15am for 8.30am start) to find the station full of people. I was surprised so many people wanted to travel to Fairbanks. But when I got on the train (I was in Carriage A, Seat 8D which meant a window seat) it was only about a half full. The train was to take 11.5 hours to travel from Anchorage to Fairbanks, with ETA of 8.00pm).

The train consisted of 2 engines, followed by a dining car, followed by two passenger cars, with the luggage car at the end. We took off on time, whilst it was still dark, which meant for some very nice photos early on. There was one vestibule on each of the two passenger cars, and these had the top half of the door removed to allow for photos to be taken. Each vestibule could fit about 3 people each side. And generally there was only photos worth taking on one side at a time. This wasn’t due to there being nothing picturesque on both sides, there was plenty to see. In fact the whole trip was nothing short of majestic. However both sides of the track from Anchorage to Fairbanks were covered by thin trees or Christmas trees. These trees stopped the camera from focusing on anything beyond them (mountains, off-grider shacks, etc.), and given the speed of the train, made the trees themselves blurry.

And with around 30 photographers on the train including around 10 hard core photographers (including myself), it was a battle to race to the vestibules first when something really great to photograph came along, or there was a break in the trees (although by the time I’d race to the vestibule, waiting my turn, focus the camera on the mountains or lakes, we’d be back to trees to block the view). It was too cold to stay in or around the vestibules for more than about 1 minute, so that was not a solution. In the seat beside me was a young lady from one of the “lower 48” (as Alaskans call the main body of USA states) who was working in Anchorage studying water use and reuse opportunities in remote communities, with her parents across the aisle. After I got up a couple of times to take photos (I had the window, she had the aisle seat), she decided to go to sit somewhere else. I offered to move to another seat myself but she was okay.

Here are a couple of my earlier photos.

We got to Mount Denali and those around it, and so I got a couple of shots of that too.

By around 3pm, the temperature was cooling and the sun was starting to go down. So I got a few shots around that too.

By around 4pm, it was so cold that the few remaining photographers were all rugged up when getting into the vestibule. I made the mistake a couple of time of putting my head out to get some photos of the train as it made a curve.

After that my head hurt so much from the cold and wind that I couldn’t take any more photos out of the vestibule windows. For those who have had a cold forehead when eating something cold too fast (like ice cream or a frozen drink or dessert), where you have to hang your head for a few seconds to let your head get back to normal – imagine it 20 times as bad. Plus the cold seeped through my gloves, and even though I had a handwarmer, I didn’t think a few photos were worth losing my fingers over. I have never had them so cold. So after that I only took a few photos through the window next to my seat. Apart from that I put on an audiobook to listen to.

During the trip we were offered breakfast, lunch and dinner. I had already had a free breakfast at my hotel so gave that a miss, but I had a tasty lunch of corn and vegetable soup, followed by a Reindeer Sausage Hogie.

The reindeer was not as tough as emu, in fact more like kangaroo in texture but more like emu in taste. I am hoping that everyone gets Christmas presents this year, as I’d feel really terrible if it turns out that I have eaten Rudolph.

For dinner I had Chef Alexa’s Penne Special, which included a blend of red and green peppers, onions and mushroom in a coconut milk tomato sauce. It was quite tasty. I might try it myself with some home grown chillis to add some bite.

About 7pm, the engineer advised the train host that he could see a little of the aurora borealis. So they turned the lights off and about two thirds of the passengers crammed across to see it. I wasn’t one of them. Mainly because there wasn’t much room on that side and a number of the passengers had their phone torches on, meaning you couldn’t see anything anyway. I hope to see it on my trip to Coldfoot in a few days. Overall it was a very enjoyable train ride. We arrived at Fairbanks about 5 minutes early. It was a very crisp (-) minus 20 degrees Celsius. Then I caught a taxi to my hotel (Westmark Fairbanks Hotel) , unpacked, went down to check out the laundry, spent about 20 minutes on the crosstrainer and rowing machine in the fitness centre, and then went to bed.

I had a fantastic day today. Had the usual hotel breakfast and then traipsed off to the Salmon Berry Tours for my Glacier Walk. There was a small amount of snowfall during the walk.

They gave me some boots and waterproof pants, then we headed off (there were 12 of us) in the dark to drive to the area where the Matanuska Glacier is. We stopped off in a little town called Palmer for a coffee break. I had a normal 12 ounce (around 350ml) Mocha and a tasty Russian Tea Cake. Then we headed up into the mountains. We watched the sun come up over the mountains, which was quite spectacular. We arrived at the site just around 12 noon. So we had lunch, I had a very tasty salmon salad and orange and spice tea. Then we headed down to the little hut to get all our gear. We had hand  and toe warmers (little sachets that you shake and then they heat up to about 57 degrees (it takes 20 minutes) and they then last 8 hours. So the toe ones we had to stick in our shoes and the hand ones we put in our pockets. So if our hands go cold, we’d put our hands in pockets and they’d warm up.

We were then given helmets and shoes “braces” with spikes on them, to keep traction in the snow and on the ice. Then we headed off on our walk. It took around an hour and a half to get to the final end point, and on the way we walked through crevices, on ice, through bits of snow, and saw majestic scenes of things frozen into ice. It was spectacular. It’s one of the best experiences that I have had. I took some really great (in my humble opinion) photos of the sun coming up (from the bus) and going back down, with shots of all sorts of geological formations and ice striations. Some of the tourists also had an ice race which was a lot of fun. Then it was time to return. It took about a half hour to get back, and it was mostly uphill, but I survived. The actual Glacier walk itself from start to finish took around 2 hours. But it was well worth it. I would love to do it again, especially since I accidentally deleted around 350 photos (leaving only 3-4 remaining) tonight whilst transferring them from the SHDC card to the computer. This is by no means one of my best shots. But I have many great memories!

Once we got back, I headed back to the hotel to change and then went off to the Atwood Concert Hall to see their version of The Nutcracker.

On the way, I stopped in to take a photo of the choir in the Anchorage Town Centre. The City’s Christmas Tree just happened to be turned on tonight, so I was lucky to see them.

The Ballet was performed by the Eugene Ballet Company and accompanied by the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra. I really enjoyed it. I have seen that ballet 3 times now, once in London, once in Melbourne, and now in Anchorage. Each one had the same framework of the story (E.T.A. Hoffman’s tale, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” which he wrote in 1861), but they were all different visually. Again it was really enjoyable.

Then off home and to pack up ready to move to the next town!

Dear diary, today was very uneventful.

With it being Thanksgiving Day here in the USA, most shops etc. were closed, except until late in the afternoon. Tomorrow is Black Friday, which is renowned for massive sales across the country with some stores being up to 40% off everything. Some shops decide to open at 5am on Friday, and others are now opening late on Thanksgiving Day to get in early. Others have decided to have their sales over a week or two given the chaos of hundreds of people waiting out the front from midnight to get bargains. I’m sure tomorrow news will have plenty of footage of the worst offenders.

Anyway, there are some real bargains to be had, including a semi-automatic tactical rifle (with a 30 round magazine) for only $499 USD, and a Lowrance Sonar GPS for $549, nearly 50% off. They also have a great range of meat and fish smokers and food dehydrators (especially ones for jerky) at less than $200. Thank goodness I don’t live here as I’d go crazy in these sales. Don’t worry Dad if you read this, I’m not buying anything. I’ll be out on a tour tomorrow thank goodness.

So basically all I did today was browse through the local newspaper, which instead of the usual 5mm thick was around 40mm thick, the balance being shopping catalogues for Black Friday sales, read the rest of the latest Lee Child novel – I enjoyed it, and watched a bit of TV. Mainly a couple of interviews with Donald Trump, and some shows going on about his nominations for various roles. Apparently some of the jobs go through automatically, but around 400+ have to be confirmed by Senate committees. I never knew it was so many, and I reckon at least a quarter will not get through. A lot of the pundits are going on about why various nominees shouldn’t be nominated as they don’t have much experience in their areas, completely missing the whole reason Trump got elected.

There was one moment of excitement this afternoon when the fire alarms went off in my hotel. So I got up, grabbed my shoes, and walked down the hall and out through the lobby. I was the only one. All the other people just stood around in the corridors looking at each other and asking what to do. And half of them were staff! So I exited the building and then the alarms switched off. So glad my mandatory training comes in useful sometimes.

My meals today were those I bought as takeaway yesterday from Ginger Restaurant. Definitely worth a visit. For lunch I had a small serving of macaroni and cheese with chilli and cherry tomatoes for entree, followed by a Thai green curry,  and for dinner I had pork egg rolls for entree and beef curry for main.

This was dinner. They have these great cardboard boxes that are able to retain liquids, and just need heating up in the microwave. I guess they are more environmentally friendly than the foam versions.

The beef curry was very tasting but had a relatively strong nutty / satay flavour which I was not expecting .

I had a Twinkie for dessert after lunch and a cupcake by the same company for dessert after dinner. I had originally decided only to try two of each and throw the rest away, but they are surprisingly addictive. They are both made of flavoured light spongecake (lemon and orange respectively), with the latter having an orange icing on top. And they are both filled with extremely tasty cream. So in the end I have had four of each, and have thrown the rest away. They are somewhat unhealthy! And they differ from anything in Coles or Woolworths. I did say whilst in the USA and Canada that I would try their cuisines etc. But I still want to look after myself.

 

Today was a pretty relaxed day. Did get up to a few things though.

The first thing was to get up for breakfast at 8am, and sat back and read the Alaska Dispatch News – the local newspaper. As expected, a lot of stuff about Trump, Obama, Global Warming etc.

Then I headed off to the Anchorage Museum. Unfortunately the main area that I would like to have seen, the Alaska Gallery is closed for renovations and does not reopen for another 8-9 months. But there was some other pretty good things to see. I did get to see a number of Alaskan themed exhibits, including those below.

 

Historically, native subsistence whale and seal / walrus hunters would not wear lifejackets as they were coloured and the native hunters needed to be camouflage. So they wore white clothing which risked their health and lives due to the temperatures. they operated in. So these white lifejacket were developed relatively recently for the Alaskan native whalers and hunters and started to be given out in 2011. The clothing was a joint development between the US Coast Guard, Department of Natural Resources and Mustang Survival Corporation.

The white bear needs no explanation (hopefully).

The painting was painted by a well known Alaskan (late in his life) in 1929 and is called Mount McKinley. The mountain was named for William McKinley, President of the USA from 1897 to 1901 when he was assassinated. In 2015, The USA President  renamed it as Mount Denali, its historical name which had deep cultural significance for the Native Alaskans. It is the tallest mountain in North America. The painter, Sydney Laurence, grew up as a painter in New York, married a fellow artist at the age of 24 and sailed to Europe, settling in Britain. At the age of 35, he sailed to Alaska. For his first 7 years he apparently wandered, without making much from gold or other endeavours. So he then turned back to painting at the age of 42. He settled in Anchorage, and became a prolific painter of Alaskan scenery. This painting was one of his most famous. There is a calendar of his painting printed and sold in Alaska each year.

So I then went home to have lunch (the final piece of pizza and one Twinkie for dessert) and then headed off to go on my photo tour with Alaskan Photo Tours. We went to three spots. The first was in the Chugach Mountains, where we took some photos at one of the creeks. I loved the ice and how it made such a difference in the way the water flows.

Then we went to the top of the mountain in another place, maybe 10 kilometres away. On the way up we saw a mother moose (cow) and her calf, so we stopped to take a few photos. This was my favourite.

Then from the top of the mountain a I got some very different photos. They didn’t come out that well directly but with a bit of a photoshop or lightroom, they’ll clean up. There was a very strong fog over the mountain ranges to the west – the Tordrillo Mountains.

Note the sail glider above the mountain on the third photo.

The final photographic stop was at one stage of sunset where the lights of the city buildings start to shine through the dusk. Sunset takes around three hours at this time of year, however there is a window of only around an half hour to take the sort of photo below.

So the photo tour was then over. I enjoyed it, especially using the various aperture priority settings and seeing how that made a difference in the photos. This will be good for the remainder of my trip.

After the tour, I was dropped off outside Ginger Restaurant, so I could purchase some takeaway for lunch and dinner tomorrow. That’s because tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, which means the public bus service does not operate, and most restaurants and shops are closed. Whilst I waited, I had the barman make me up a cocktail based around Alaskan flavours. So he made one of Alaskan Gin, and it included cinnamon, lemon, bitters and a few other ingredients. I liked it so much, I stayed for a short dinner and had 5 of the same cocktails. They were very tasty, a shame I didn’t get the list opf ingredients.

After that, I went back to the hotel, put the meals in the fridge, and went to the gym for a half hour. I then turned on the news to see the ongoing diatribes from both sides about the election of President-elect Trump, then updated this blog.

Very best wishes to all, happy Thanksgiving to any Americans, and Happy Birthday to Jai Perkinson.

 

So today was a great day – my first full day in Anchorage.

I didn’t get out of bed until 10am. I woke up somewhat earlier to open the curtains but then got back into bed. So feeling much better after the long previous day of flying. So I didn’t plan to do too much.

I headed out to the shops to get some basic stuff needed for my trip that I didn’t wish to carry over from Australia. I added a few things to the list within about 5 seconds after walking out of the hotel front door.

 

I first went to Big Ray’s camping goods store. The first item was a thermal balaclava (it was damn cold again!), and some thermal socks to put my camera bodies and batteries into when I head up to Fairbanks on the weekend. Apparently they don’t really like it to be too cold and go flat really quickly. I also got some neat disposable toe and hand warmers to test out – the toe warmers when I head out to the glaciers and the hand warmers to trial with the camera batteries inside the thermal socks. They had a few racks of guns, pistols, rifles etc and lots of racks of things to do with them. Of course we don’t get those at Mountain Design.This is only a quarter of what they had in cabinets, with a lot on the back wall too.

I did really like their knives, they had even more of them. I also went to the camera stores (Stewarts’ Photo Shop) and bought a Manfrotto Road Trip tripod for my camera. I had been thinking of buying one online but buying once I got here was more sensible financially.

I then stopped in at a restaurant called Ginger for lunch. It was a great looking restaurant (see below) and was served by a great waitress.

The cuisine was quite interesting, including egg rolls, thai style, burgers, tacos, curries but with a great fusion of flavours and colours.  I decided to take the menu of the day (soup and main) with a creamy wild portobello mushroom soup, and a lamb burger but with a satay and beetroot flavour and lettuce. I washed that down with two glasses of A to Z brand Pinot Gris, which had a butter and lemon flavour and left a satay flavour on the palate. I believe it comes from Oregon. All in all, I really enjoyed the meal, and was well served by Emily, the waitress.

After the lunch I headed across the road to the 5th Avenue Mall to wander around and buy a few other things off my list, including groceries. It was a reasonable sized mall but didn’t have anything I wanted. So I went back to the hotel to drop off my purchases and check out where else to go to purchase what I needed. Looking up the local calendar, I found out that there was a Walmart on 31st Avenue (my hotel is on 8th Avenue)  and there is a bus service just around the corner from the hotel. So I caught the bus down to Walmart. the trip cost $2, which is good. On the bus was a sign stating that there would be no bus service on Thanksgiving Day, which just happens to be this Thursday. Unfortunately I had planned to visit a number of museums and galleries on Thursday, so now I’m not sure they’ll even be open – will have to ring them all I guess. Herewith a photo of the Walmart store with the Chugach Mountains in the background. They look spectacular.

So Walmart was huge – with a lot of the things I need and even much more that I didn’t. I spent about an hour and a half wandering around the store looking at everything and picking up what I wanted and just seeing everything else. I was even able to get my groceries. The only things I had a problem with were trying to buy Up N Go (the three staff in that area had never heard of breakfast cereal in a drink), so I gave up on that but didn’t buy any others because, like many of ours, they had too much sugar content. At least Up N Go only has 4g per serve. The lowest other I could find at Walmart was 10g. I also had a problem finding a set of bathroom scales. The first server either didn’t understand what I was saying or didn’t know what they were, then I got directed to different parts of the store, and they weren’t with homewares or pharmacy (the normal places), and in the end they were in Hardware. I still haven’t worked that one out. The last item I could not find was gym shorts. They had no shorts at all. I guess I could understand that in winter if the gym was outdoors, but given gyms are inside, I was mildly surprised. So I bought some tracksuit pants.

Anyway, I then went out and only had to wait in the dark cold air for about 5 minutes for a bus to take me back to the hotel. I dropped everything off in my room, unpacked, and then put on the tracksuit pants and tshirt and headed to the hotel gym. I got 15 minutes on the cross trainer and 10 minutes on the recumbent bicycle, so that felt really good. Then I went back to the room and had a couple of slices of last night’s pizza and took out my dessert. Which was my second round of USA foods 🙂

Then I watched TV, updated my blog for yesterday and then today, whilst learning how to use iCloud to transfer my photos between iPhone, iPad and Surface Pro. And now at 12.43am I am going to bed.

 

Today was the longest 21st of November that I can remember, in fact mine went for 34 hours.

I checked in my one bag at the QANTAS counter in Melbourne due to the multi leg flight. The lady said I would need to collect my bag at Vancouver to recheck it through to Anchorage. The plane left Melbourne airport at 10am, on a flight to Brisbane (1 hour 10 minutes), then had an hour to wait for the next flight via Air Canada.

So when I handed my Boarding Pass to the lady at the Air Canada ticket login machines, we found that I didn’t receive a luggage voucher from Melbourne. And when she looked on her computer, my luggage was not registered. So not a great feeling, thinking I’d lost my luggage this early in the holiday! I remember how much this caused a problem to my brother Chris a number of years ago when he went to the USA. Anyway, the lady gave me my next 3 boarding passes and smiled and said to leave the luggage issue with her, she’d check with Melbourne and see what she could do. So I did all the customs stuff and sat down for a wait. So boarding was announced and as I went through, she caught up with me with an update. She’d located the luggage and had it checked all the way through to Anchorage so I would not need to worry about that. I was quite glad to hear that.

Then I got onto the plane and found my seat. So this was a Premium Economy seat. And I had a window seat on the right. I could not see out the windows as they were pretty dark, which was not what I was looking for – until I found that there was an electronic dimming “sensor”. The sensor was round with white on the top half and grey on the bottom half. And there are little lights on the left of the sensor. Only one light goes on at a time. The more pushes on the top half of the sensor, the lights go up, and the more pushes on the bottom half, the lights go further down. As the lights go higher, the window gets darker. So cool. I could not find this on the internet except on a Dreamliner (787 800) even though I was meant to be on a 737 800. Here a shot out of the window after the flight got up to cruising height.

 

But even more impressive, the seat was so good. Where the Economy seats were a 3-5-3 configuration, the Premium Economy seats were 2-3-2. So much leg room and shoulder room. And below was my first meal (of 3 during the 13 hour flight).

The entertainment system had lots of movies, TV shows, music albums, games etc. Better than I’ve experienced on any other flights. And the alcohol and foods available were free. So I watched 2 movies, 4 TV show episodes, listened to 2 albums and read about half of my novel, Lee Child’s new book Night School. Just loved that flight.

So sadly the flight ended. But Vancouver airport was great. And I got to see my first glimpses of snow-covered mountains in North America.

The next flight was to Seattle. The plane was about 15 minutes late, as it was towed out of a hanger to the plane entry area and then had to be checked by a bunch of engineers etc. I was pretty surprised, it was not a normal jet, but a turbo-prop Bombardier Q400 Dash 8, with 2 propellers. It did look pretty cool. So I got on with the other passengers, and the air hostesses went to count us. First she came up with 10, then 11 and then her colleague counted 11, and had to recount as there were meant to be 12 of us. It was quite funny and we all laughed because the plane took approximately 160 passengers, but only 12 of us. So they decided in the end there were actually 12 of us onboard (they always counted 12 going from front to back, and 10 or 11 going from back to front) and everyone had a good laugh. So we took off about 25 minutes late and we got to Seattle in about 50 minutes.

Seattle Airport looked surprisingly small and run down. But it had great shops and so I changed some currency into USD and went to look for B Terminal where I was to fly out. It turned out the airport was huge with 4 joined terminals and I had to catch a train from where I was to B Terminal. And that terminal was also very large and had lots of shops. It also wasn’t too rundown like where the arrivals was. I went to Starbucks and waited 20 minutes for a coffee. And it wasn’t that great, but I prefer a decent espresso.

Then I went and waited for the plane at Delta Airlines. And Delta Airlines had overbooked the flight. They announced this about 45 minutes before the flight and asked if there were anyone from my flight was interested in going on the flight the next morning and they’d pay for a hotel. Then 10 minutes later they asked again, but said they’d offer up to 3 people to go on a later flight, and give them a $500 voucher for use in the next 12 months. So some people went up to speak with them. Then 10 minutes they offered the last offer again but with an $800 voucher. I would have taken it if (a) I wasn’t worried about my luggage and (b) I could use the voucher! So one gue who went to them after the $500 voucher offer went up and looked like he was wanting the higher offer. They didn’t look like they said yes, but changed the announcement 5 minutes later to ask for more offers, but would tell you what they’d offer only if you went up to the counter. Very interesting “Dutch auction”. They also kept announcing that if people had 3 bags, they would have to check one into cargo, which they could do, due to the fully sold out flight.

So we got onto the flight, and it was packed but no worse than any FIFO flight I’ve been on between Perth and Karratha / Port Hedland. The plane left at 2.55pm. The hostesses were fantastic though and it was a quite enjoyable flight, with the pilot speaking a couple of times that the plane would likely get into Anchorage a half hour early (not bad for a 3 1/2 hour flight). I got to watch a movie and 2 episodes of a TV show.

Got into Anchorage airport and there were a number of shops closed at the airport but also a few still open, mainly hunting, camping and food stores. I waited to get my luggage – it turned up, yay – and then went out to wait for the taxi. Luckily I had put on my thermal undershirt in Seattle, because not surprisingly it was DAMN COLD! It was -8C. I caught a taxi to the hotel (Quality Suites Downtown Hotel) and the taxi driver was great. Initially I went to sit next to him in the front until I found it was the driver’s seat – left hand driving duh!! – so sat in the back. He told me about a few great places to visit and some really good restaurants around where I was staying. So I checked in, at 6pm when it was dark, watched a bit of TV then ordered dinner. This was my first American meal! Yum.

Then off to bed.

So Chris and I have come to the end of our DIY Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

Breakfast was a pancake from the kitchen, it being The Nunnery’s Pancake Sunday.

We then checked out and headed off to our final venue – the IceBar Melbourne, on Brunswick Street, Fitzroy. It was a great experience. So we put on gloves and blue overcoats and went into a small-ish room which had a number of great ice sculptures based on movies like the Matrix, Transformers, etc.. There was a bar in one corner where the young lady who made our cocktails (we received one cocktail and a shot from the menu as part of the payment to get in). We stayed for about 40 minutes after the 11am opening, got to play noughts and crosses with ice tiles, and other numbers game that you had to line a series of numbers from 1-9 so they added up to 15 on each row, column and diagonal. I got close (all rows and columns, one diagonal but not the other), after which the young lady showed us the solution. We got talking, and I mentioned that I was heading off to Alaska. She said that the temperature was set to minus 10 degrees during the opening hours, and minus 12 degrees at night, which kept the ice sculptures frozen. She had come from around Scotland way and said that this temperature was okay to deal with if you have the right gear. So I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay in short stints, but will definitely purchase a face cover or two when I get to Alaska in a couple of days so that my face doesn’t freeze! Plus a thermal covering or mini bag for my camera batteries, as the cold makes them flat, and I don’t want to lose these opportunities to take photos.

Unfortunately the program is not allowing me to upload the two photos of us at the IceBar so I’ll add them into the comments section on FB for those interested in them.

After the IceBar, we headed to Broadmeadows Shopping Centre for lunch, and then I dropped Chris off at the airport before heading to my hotel for the afternoon and evening. Thanks Chris for a great week with many different cuisines and experiences! I had a thoroughly enjoyable week.

Over the next day, I shall be travelling to Alaska. The first leg is Melbourne to Brisbane on QANTAS, then from there to Vancouver, then to Seattle for the final leg to Anchorage. The flights and layovers will take around 25+ hours and so I plan to have a 24 hour break in the hotel to recover from jetlag and get in tune with the times. And then off to further adventure!

This morning we headed off to a cafe that Chris had found online. It was called Sonido, a South American place providing mainly Columbian and Venezuelan cuisine. The room was filled with old posters in Spanish and wooden boxes and other momentos. It created a great atmosphere. SAnd the music came from an old record player in the corner of the room. They had a large range of old south american records. I had a flat white and an arepas filled with cheese. The arepas was not a finely ground as some of the flours used here, so it had it’s own distinctive taste and feel to it. I would certainly recommend visiting it.

During the morning we hung around in the city, close to where our lunch venue was, and sat at the tram spot for an hour reading, after wandering around the South Bank area. We had to go past the Crown Casino on the way but never felt like popping in. As it got closer to 1pm at the tram stop, more people arrived. And then at 1pm or lunch venue itself arrived – the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant. Here it is below arriving to collect us.

There were 3 trams in all for lunch, catering for up to 36 persons per tram.

So the trams moved around for a couple of hours across through a part of the city, to St Kilda and so on. I just love the architecture around St Kilda, as well as the yachts out on the water.

The weather was just superb for the day’s journey.

So for the lunch, we had an entree (both Chris and I went for the Duck Terrine, in the mains I had the Beef and Chris had the chicken. I stuck with Shiraz throughout whilst Chris started with  Sauvignon Blanc. We then followed up with a shared cheese plate, and I went on to have a cup of tea and a followup glass of Baileys. Chris had coffee. The ride was juts delightful and I would recommend it too.

We then headed home to rest up for the evening’s entertainment. So at 5.20pm we headed off for the walk to “Rare” a steakhouse restaurant. There are 3 in the city. We arrived just before 6pm (our booking time) and sat down to enjoy the atmosphere. It was quite a polished venue with lots and lots of wine.

We started the evening with a bottle of sparkling water and moved to a Rochford Grenache Rose, which was quite sweet but went down very well with the shared entrees of wild mushroom arancini and salt and pepper calamari. We then moved onto the main meal,m for myself of eye fillet medium rare (as Neil Perry says all steak should be cooked to medium rare), with mashed potato and a shared greek salad and coleslaw. I was extremely pleased to see that they had not americanised and removed the “cole” from “coleslaw”. We matched the main meal with a bottle of 2014 Karawatta Cabernet Sauvignon Langhorn Creek. The pepper and spices of the wine worked well with the steaks.

The mashed potato of the main came out looking like a peeled potato. It had a great look to it. Chris and I surmised with was basted with butter, or milk, before serving. So I asked the waiter how this was done, and he went to ask the kitchen staff. They said it was with butter, lots and lots of butter. Another thing to try when I get home.

For dessert, Chris had a trio of sorbets whilst I had vanilla icecream and chocolate sauce. The sauce was sold as “mars bar chocolate” it it very much tasted like the outer layer and caramel from a Mars Bar. An interesting thing that occurred during the main course was one waiter brought over a small container of toothpicks (I’d already grabbed one from the bar) and left it on our table – which I moved to the other side of the table; then about 10 minutes later, our main waitress brought over another one and left it on our table. I asked the waitress whether they thought we had really bad teeth or why this was done. She explained that as a way of seeing how we are going at the table but without disturbing the customers, they will put one of these containers on the table part way thrugh the meal. If the meal is fine, then we don;’t get disturbed, but if it isn’t then they will learn about that. It’s such a good system.

Rare provided a very enjoyable meal and atmosphere and was well worth the visit. However I decided after having walked 11.5 kilometres during the day, that I would catch a taxi back to the Nunnery. Chris wasn’t interested, he wanted to walk, so I caught my cab and got back to charge my phone and start to read a book. I had gotten through about 3 chapters of the book by the time he arrived, but he was happy to walk and I was happy to taxi. So all ended well. Then it was off to bed for us both.

Well, today we left the quiet of country Victoria to head to the big city. I got my first experience of driving on Tram Rails. Interesting.

Once we arrived in Melbourne, we checked into The Nunnery, a hostel just north of the city. It’s quite a nice setup, and really well positioned for walks into town.

So we went for a walk, stopped in at the Greek Cafe for coffee and cake. I had a large Pistachio Baklava. I do miss them, always delicious (apart from when I try to make them myself). I bought a couple of bits of camera gear at Michael’s, including a remote unit that will allow me to do interval shots off camera. So will hopefully work for the aurora borealis.

We then had a few beers at The Pumphouse – Monkey Bar. I had a tasty bitter beer from one of the Charity Taps. This is for selected drinks where part of the proceeds go to a specific registered charity, which changes every two months. This one was for Flying Fox, a charity to help the younger disabled get out and have a bit of fun. The side effect of this will also be providing the carer with a respite break, so good all around.

For dinner we headed over to Lygon Street for some genuine Italian fare. We stopped off at Carmine’s; and started off with a bottle of Pinot Grigio and an antipasto plate. Yum. I then had spaghetti bolognaise (which made me realise that I put too much mince in my sauce, so will try to do better when I make my next batch)  – Chris had Fettucini Carbonara – and then dessert. I had a Creme Brulee paired with a small glass of Botrytis Semillion, and we followed up with an Afoggato with Frangelico. Delightful meal all around, with great service from the team – see photo below.

Then we headed home via a Whisky Bar. Very packed in with customers, as the bar was rather small, but with an extensive range of whiskys. I had two Irish whisky’s with ginger ale. And they really hit the spot. It was a great end to the day.