Cathy and Karen got in about 4:30 and sent us a text that read:

We are here, room 309. Give us some time to decompress and we’ll text you to meet.

While we waited for them, John and I decided we wanted to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant. The young woman driving the van from the airport had highly recommended it. John looked up the menu online, which looked good albeit a bit expensive, but we were in Alaska where food prices were likely higher. I thought I’d get the grilled shrimp salad since I hadn’t eaten anything green all day.

An hour later, Cathy texted (I do love texting for this kind of communication):

We are ready. Do you want us to come to your room?

Yes, please do come down.

I called Krista on the room phone to ask if she was ready. She said, “John told me six, so I’m just getting out of the shower. I’ll get some clothes on and come down to your room.”

Cathy and Karen were there first and then Krista arrived. We introduced them to each other and chatted a bit. I told them that I thought it would be easier to eat at the hotel restaurant and they agreed. Our little group proceeded downstairs to the restaurant.

OOPS

I happened to be in front of the group and when I arrived at the restaurant’s host desk. “Five, please,” I said holding up five fingers on my hand.

He looked at me and said, “Do you have a reservation?”

“I didn’t know we needed one.”

“That’s going to be a problem.”

“Well, then never mind.”

I spun around to leave and physically ran into John who was behind me. He put his hand on my shoulders and I slipped past him. He turned to follow me and the others followed. I explained that we needed a reservation, so no eating there. The driver had not indicated that we’d need a reservation or I would have called and gotten one. Even then it might have been too late, but at least I would have known. I was upset and it took me a while to figure out what I was feeling. It finally came to me I felt stupid and I hate that. Also, I felt like I looked stupid in front of my friends and new acquaintance. It was John and my idea to go to the hotel restaurant and we didn’t even know the rules

The host didn’t make it any better. If he had said, “Oh, I’m so sorry but we won’t be able to seat you without a reservation.” Or something like that, I don’t think I would have felt quite so stupid. He acted as if I should have known. What I heard was “of course, you need a reservation on a Sunday night at the only restaurant in town that is open.” Maybe we should have, but generally one has more choices.

Oh, those were totally the stories I was telling myself. Looking back on it, I’m sure the group didn’t think that nor did the host of the restaurant realize how I would react. I ruminated on how I was feeling for a while until I figured out all of the above. Once I processed it, I let it go, or at least attempted to.

PIZZA

Having failed at our first restaurant attempt, we visited the front desk clerk and asked him where the other walking distance restaurant was. Bear in mind, it was the only other restaurant open on a Sunday evening. It’s not like we had a lot of choices.

He told us it was Sicily’s Pizza on 14^th Avenue and Noble Street. We were on 1^st Avenue. He said to walk one block down to Noble Street and then all the way down Noble. The map app said it was about 0.7 miles. Off we went. It was certainly walkable, but you know how it is when you don’t really know where you are going (and you are hungry and ruminating about what happened at the previous restaurant)? The trip there seemed to me to take a long time.

We walked into the very small dining room of the pizza joint. A family of 10 was spread over about three tables waiting in the dining area when we arrived. The teenagers of the family were either leaning over the table with their heads on it or looking at their phones.

Our order was chaotic because there we had three different people ordering. I wanted a salad and one piece of pizza. Despite having a small pizza box on display, we were told we couldn’t get a small pizza, so John got us a medium pepperoni pizza and a small salad for me. It seemed to take forever to get the food, but finally, we got it. I ate the pizza first because it was served before the salad. I had asked for Italian dressing and got Ranch, which I don’t like. Eating salad dry was preferable, but John took the Ranch back and got me some Italian. The package label read Paul Newman salad dressing, which I’d had before, so I knew I’d like it. Yay! I appreciated John getting a different dressing for me. The salad itself was quite tasty too. All the ingredients tasted very fresh.

Krista ordered a Sierra Mist to drink. She usually ordered Sprites, but this place was Pepsi products only. When they brought her a can of Sierra Mist, she asked if they had a plastic bottle. When he came back with a 32-ounce bottle, I barely held in my hysteria. It was a huge bottle. She just took it with grace, poured herself a cupful, and took that giant bottle back to her room to drink later. Everyone had a lot of pizza left over and asked for take-home containers to take back it to the hotel. Thank goodness for the mini-fridge and the microwave in the room.

HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN

On our walk back to the hotel, we met a family of four walking toward us. They asked us about the pizza place. We told them how to get there and assured them it was edible. Not the best pizza in the world, but better than nothing.

Around 3^rd Street, a woman in a car in a parking lot called out to us, “Can you tell me where you got that food?” There was a plaintive note in her voice when she said “food.” We told her where we got it. We should have been getting a kickback for advertising for this place. After we got past the parking lot, we talked about how sad the woman sounded with the little hitch in her voice. We laughed, though not at her, more about being in a strange place with few options for dinner when you are hungry. We speculated it was another hungry group (probably, tourists) looking for an open restaurant on a Sunday evening in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Once we got to the room and put the pizza away, we got ready for bed and settled down to read a bit before turning out the lights. I was looking forward to Day 1 of our Alaska Adventure.

You may be wondering why I called the first day of our trip Day 0. Nat Hab labels the days of the trip and starts with Day 1 as the day that travelers often arrive and meet their guide at dinner. Some people probably travel on Day 1. John and I do not trust the airlines to not screw up the flights somehow (not that it has ever happened to us, but there’s always a first time) and make us late for dinner, so we always travel the day before the trip officially starts. To not mess up Nat Hab’s labeling of the days, I called our day of flying Day 0.