Humdawg's Travel Blog: Taste of Mardi Gras

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Leaving Denali National Park
Coastal International Inn
The Jacket Fiasco
Exploring Anchorage
Romano's Italian Restaurant

Leaving Denali National Park

Our last morning in the Denali National Park area, we were up early to get things packed back up and checked out of the hotel around 10am. We stopped to pick up some breakfast before heading out of town, and Mark was so kind as to attempt to help a girl who had a horribly flat tire to no avail: She had to call in some buddies with better tools. It just goes to show how sweet my hubby is to be a thousand miles from home and STILL willing to try to help a damsel in distress :)

While he was helping her, I grabbed another Vanilla Chai Latte and a cinnamon roll from my favorite place:

After doing all he could, Mark finally settled on a Subway breakfast sandwich, and then we headed out on our long drive back to Anchorage for our final 2 days in Alaska.

It was a LONG drive that seemed even longer than the way out was, but after a couple short pit-stops, including lunch at McDonald's in Wasilla, we finally made it back to Anchorage and across town to find our hotel for the next 2 evenings: The Coastal International Inn.

Coastal International Inn

It was, as expected, pretty dumpy, but we weren't particular, and didn't want to spend a fortune, as the other hotels in the area were going for around $200/night! It also had an airport shuttle, and we had an early morning flight on the 11th and were dropping off our rental car on the 10th.

The Jacket Fiasco

When we were a good hour out of Denali National Park, we realized that I had put Mark's really nice Columbia jacket in the closet at the last hotel we were staying at. Of course, after freaking out about the idea of an additional 2 hours on the road, we finally found reception and called the hotel and made arrangements for the jacket to make its way on down to Anchorage on a charter bus coming from that location the next day. Or so we thought...but that's a story for Day 15 lol

Exploring Anchorage

After checking in and getting settled for the next couple days, we hopped in the car and headed downtown, as we were planning on going to dinner at the highly-recommended Glacier Brewhouse. It was CRAZY downtown, which we found out it was because they had this huge Taste of Mardi Gras event going on down there (which was $30pp, and by the time we got there, all the food vendors were already gone, so it made no sense), which was why it was so packed downtown.

We were starving at that point, it was almost 8pm, and finding parking was horrific down there, so Mark finally just dropped me off at the door so I could put our names in and went to find a parking spot further away. Unfortunately it was going to be a 90 MINUTE wait, so I called him back right away and told him to come pick me up and we would have to find something else.

Romano's Italian Restaurant

At that point, we were so hungry and tired of driving around, so we finally settled on Romano's Italian Restaurant, which wasn't downtown, nor was it one of the "widely acclaimed" restaurants in Anchorage, but the food was good, service was good, and food came quickly.