Anchorage at Christmas
Posted on December 26, 2009 with 1 comment
We touched down on Wednesday after a harrowing flight into Anchorage airport (it is worth noting that I consider most flights to be harrowing, only some are more harrowing than others. This was a mid level crisis-- most people were gasping, but I was the only one swearing and banging my hands on the tray table. I really dislike flying, and I always have.) Our bags did not arrive with us, but our small corgi traveled under the seat in front of us, and was no worse for the wear. All in all, a good start.
Anchorage at Christmas time is dark, dark, dark. The sky begins to lighten at 9:30, but the sun doesn't make much of an appearance until 10 AM, and even then it never travels very far from the horizon. I spent this morning (it is the day after Christmas) walking the ski trails that run through the city center with two spirited corgis, taking in the city. The dogs and I had the run of downtown, since no one else was around. (Later, I found that everyone was in the mid-town mini mall, returning things to REI. They have an epic return policy. It's almost worth finding something to return to them, just to see how epic it really is.)
Anchorage downtown is a strange mix of tee-shirt shops (I have never seen so many tee-shirt shops in a 5 block radius), bars, shiny Oil-company "sky scrapers" (none more than 15 stories high) and squat municipal buildings. Still, it has it's own beauty-- a partially frozen harbor, 2 feet of still-white snow everywhere, and the Chugach mountains rising high over everything. This is my new-husbands hometown, and I am learning how to love it.
We had a lovely Christmas-- the first few days I've gone in most of a year without working on something music related-- no playing, no booking, no hours of email. Now that Christmas is over, 2010 seems impossibly close-- only a few more days-- and I have a enormous amount of work to do before the start of the March tour. Luckily, we are headed up to the mountains, so that I can ignore reality for a few more days. Then, it's back to work. I swear.
This is a new feature of this website-- the blog-- and I am testing it out here. It might be fun to blog in 2010-- not that the world needs any more travel/tour blogs-- but I'll give it a shot. It's getting dark here, at 2:44, and I'm going to get one more walk in before I start drinking.
Anchorage at Christmas time is dark, dark, dark. The sky begins to lighten at 9:30, but the sun doesn't make much of an appearance until 10 AM, and even then it never travels very far from the horizon. I spent this morning (it is the day after Christmas) walking the ski trails that run through the city center with two spirited corgis, taking in the city. The dogs and I had the run of downtown, since no one else was around. (Later, I found that everyone was in the mid-town mini mall, returning things to REI. They have an epic return policy. It's almost worth finding something to return to them, just to see how epic it really is.)
Anchorage downtown is a strange mix of tee-shirt shops (I have never seen so many tee-shirt shops in a 5 block radius), bars, shiny Oil-company "sky scrapers" (none more than 15 stories high) and squat municipal buildings. Still, it has it's own beauty-- a partially frozen harbor, 2 feet of still-white snow everywhere, and the Chugach mountains rising high over everything. This is my new-husbands hometown, and I am learning how to love it.
We had a lovely Christmas-- the first few days I've gone in most of a year without working on something music related-- no playing, no booking, no hours of email. Now that Christmas is over, 2010 seems impossibly close-- only a few more days-- and I have a enormous amount of work to do before the start of the March tour. Luckily, we are headed up to the mountains, so that I can ignore reality for a few more days. Then, it's back to work. I swear.
This is a new feature of this website-- the blog-- and I am testing it out here. It might be fun to blog in 2010-- not that the world needs any more travel/tour blogs-- but I'll give it a shot. It's getting dark here, at 2:44, and I'm going to get one more walk in before I start drinking.