This was the last day of our 25-night cruise. The Norwegian Jade docked in Whittier AK at 7am and we were off the ship by 8am. The “long walk” to the bus was less than a quarter mile (Marlene thinks it was more, I think it was less) and the buses were waiting to take us to the airport. There is a one-way tunnel near the port which is the only way in or out of Whittier. It changes direction every 30 minutes. We were fortunate to catch it at the right time and had to wait only a few minutes to get out of the port.
I guess we were also fortunate that it was merely cloudy; Whitter gets about 200 inches of rain each year.
The 63-mile ride into Anchorage was scenic, but it is difficult taking photos through the dirty window of a moving bus.
We couldn’t unload at the airport until the luggage truck finished unloading so we took a brief detour through downtown Anchorage. Not a bad-looking medium-sized city (population about 600,000).
We were happy to have our luggage with us as the line to retrieve luggage was very long. We ran into a couple of folks from the ship and chatted a while before heading to the Avis car rental counter. They didn’t have a compact car available, but gave us a Toyota Cross (aka RAV4) for the same price. We drove to the hotel (Wingate by Marriott) and were told that our room wasn’t ready. So we walked next door to the Ulu knife factory and got a nice personalized tour of this small factory.
The hotel is undergoing extensive renovations – a fact that was not disclosed to me when I booked it. The hallways were a mess. And shortly after we arrived workmen started removing the floor tiles in the breakfast area. Dust everywhere. Not pleasant. We considered moving to another hotel but there aren’t many affordable (and available) ones in Anchorage. And our room, though basic, is updated, clean and has new mattresses. And a view of the dumpster.
It had no table or chair, but they were delivered promptly when we requested them.
We walked to downtown, did a little window shopping and found a nice craft brewery/restaurant that we will try during our stay.
The sun sets late here – it was still pretty light at 10pm.
I will provide the cruise wrapup next. Also what we did on our nearly 4 full days in Anchorage.