Once again, my stellar procrastinating blogging skills have shown themselves and its taken me forever to get to our last Alaskan adventure post. We finished up our cruise in Seward, Alaska and it might have been my favorite town on the whole itinerary. Since we weren't leaving Seward until that evening, we chose a late departure from the ship, which worked out nicely because we weren't contending with nearly as much of a crowd as we would have earlier.
When you leave the ship, you head straight to a little welcome/visitors center where you can pick up your luggage. If you have no idea what's going on, which is usually the case for me, there are a couple of employees there that cheerfully answered the same questions that I assume a million people before me had already asked them. From the visitors center you can hop on the free Seward shuttle bus that continuously circulates through town. They took us and our luggage to the train station where we checked our bags for our evening train ride to Anchorage. If you have carryon bags that you'd rather not tote through town all day, you can leave those at the train station office as well, which was a nice surprise.
From there, we took a stroll along the water just enjoying the scenery and trying to decide how to spend our day. There was a playful sea otter just chilling off the beach so we watched him for a bit before making our way to the Seward Sea Life Center. Its a bit of a hike from the train station, so if you'd rather not walk, the bus stops there as well, but the view along the water is well worth the hike if you ask me.
The Sea Life Center was really interesting and has some really cool exhibits, including a bird room where you can get up close and personal with some friendly Alaskan sea birds. Definitely worth checking out if you're in Seward.
From the Sea Life Center, we wandered back down the main drag in town and had some lunch at the Chattermark. I just had a burger, but the hubs tried the caribou stew and says it was pretty tasty. After lunch we hit a few shops then just wandered about the neighborhood streets enjoying the weather until Colby declared that he heard a bald eagle. As it turns out, he knows his birds and sure enough, we found a pair nesting in a tree. We managed to get some pictures before a fire siren went off and sent them both off into the distance.
At this point we still had most of the day to kill, so we decided to head up to Kenai Fjords National Park to check out Exit Glacier. You can catch a shuttle with Exit Glacier Guides for ten dollars a person, but I recommend calling ahead to make sure they have room in the bus. We didn't, but luckily, they managed to squeeze us in. You could spend all day hiking and exploring in the park, but if you only have a couple hours, that's still plenty of time to walk up to the glacier from the parking lot. Its a nice paved trail for a good portion of it though it gets a bit more strenuous if you want to get right up next to the glacier. I've read that the park rangers also give a free tour hourly, but we just explored a bit on our own.
When we made it back to Seward, we found a little watering hole and settled down at the bar to snack and have some beverages until it was time to head back to the train station. If you're in town, have a drink at Ray's Waterfront Restaurant. You can't beat the view!
We ended the trip with one of my most favorite parts... The train ride from Seward to Anchorage on the Alaskan Railway. I had great intentions of taking some pictures along the ride, but it turns out they serve dinner on this train... and we all know how easily distracted I am by food. I had read some reviews of the food and they weren't great, but we really enjoyed our dinner. And its "party seating" which means if there are just two of you, they sit you with two strangers. Luckily we got paired up with a lovely couple from Anchorage who had come down on the train that morning for a date day in Seward (how romantic is that??). We spent the entire ride in the dining car chatting and having drinks with them. It was a blast. And of course we thoroughly enjoyed the view along the way, even if we didn't take any pictures.
Sadly, all things must come to an end, including vacations. So when we arrived in Anchorage late that evening, we grabbed a taxi (be prepared for a wait!) and headed to the airport for a 1am flight back to the real world.
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