For lunch we stopped at a fantastic Chinese restaurant called Charlie's Bakery & Chinese Restaurant (which is my new favorite name for a Chinese restaurant). The sesame chicken, pork fried rice, pork dumplings, BBQ pork roll, and Custard roll were all amazing (the fried egg rolls were a little too small for our liking). It was the best Chinese food we've had outside of Chicago. The bakery aspect also put me in mind of the now-long-gone Augusta Bakery that we used to frequent in my childhood. The place was rather busy, and getting more so as we were leaving or I would have picked up more rolls.
We picked up a tile sample from Lowes that we thought would match the tile in our dining room that our dogs tore up (spoiler: it didn't actually match). We also stopped by Barnes and Noble to bother Robert and to pick up some Christmas gifts for the boys. Otherwise, most of our shopping was done in Costco as I drooled over the TVs (not literally, as that would be both disgusting and dangerous), and we picked up two cart loads worth of groceries and supplies (i.e. toilet paper).
We then met up with Rob and Shawna and had an excellent dinner at Studio 100. All of the food there was amazing, but the prize definitely goes to the croissant pudding.
We had feared that, since the entire drive to Anchorage was through rain, our drive back would be icy, dark, and slow. Instead, the temperature actually seemed to go up, even through the pass; there were breaks in the clouds that let the waxing gibbous moon cast an eerily beautiful light, allowing us to see the mountains on the drive; and despite the road icing once we passed Cooper Landing (and causing at least that we passed one vehicle to end up on its side), we made it home sooner than we expected.
It was a great date.