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Beautiful birch forests at the gardens

A bee buzzing around the peonies.

Forget Me Nots, which I think are the state flower of Alaska.

A cat joining us on the patio.

Marika and me at the restaurant on Sunday night.

Since my doctor cleared me for more activity, we've been slowly doing a bit more and more. Initially, we just went for walks around the hospital (which is actually quite large!). But on Saturday, Marika was in a road race so she lent us her car for the day. First, we went out to breakfast at the Cafe Amsterdam and had a ridiculously large breakfast. We used the opportunity of having a car to go grocery shopping, and then in the afternoon, we went to Anchorage Markets and Festival, which is a 2 block open air market, full of all sorts of different things. We bought some appropriately themed Alaskan baby clothing and some absolutely beautiful photos of Alaskan wildlife that I'm planning on framing for the baby's room, whenever I do finally get home. One of the things that I found most interesting was the street food at the festival- lots of local items, such as lots of halibut and salmon, and most intriguing perhaps was the salmon and reindeer quesadilla.

Yesterday, we took a taxi to the Anchorage Botanical Gardens and took a nice 30 min stroll around the place. That's where all the pictures of nature at the top of this posting are from. I'm sorry, I haven't yet figured out how to embed pictures within the text of my blog posting! The weather yesterday afternoon was sunny and warm, so when we returned to the Hickel House we sat out on the patio, and were joined by a local cat. Then Marika drove us downtown and we all had dinner together at Simon and Seaforts, a great restaurant overlooking Cook Inlet. The food was excellent, particularly the mixed berry cobbler that I had for dessert. So all in all, an excellent weekend!