Day 15 - Downtown Anchorage
Since we have already travelled all over the place but hadn't really been to Anchorage itself, we decided that would be on our schedule for today. So we went downtown to see the city. It turned out that even though Anchorage might be quite big, and is even the biggest city in Alaska, Downtown isn't very big at all. It does not really have many impressive skyscrapers, and most of the shopping-opportunities are concentrated in one Mall. Other than that most buildings either house restaurants or Alaska Gift Shops.
We walked along the coast for a bit and then went to the Visitor Center to find out what else we could go see. It was so crowded in there though that we just turned our back and walked right out and explored the city on our own. We took the shuttle bus to the "Ulu Factory", where we saw how the original alaskan ulu-knives are manufactured. We went by "Reindeer-Dog"-Stands selling hotdogs made from reindeer, walked by (and partly into) all the Alaska Gift Shops, the Hard Rock Café and even into the Apple Store. Initially I wanted to go to the Alaska Museum also, but in the end we ran out of time.
The funny thing with american cities is their non existent "old town". Tim is standing right in front of the oldest building of Anchorage, which was built in 1915. Woohoo, that's old!
SK