Winnipeg
My start to this trip was not ideal. I had set my alarm for 4:30am so I would have
time to finish up my tidying for the Scottish relatives and to make sure my
initial pack was sufficient. But at 5:47am,
Mom arrived for our 6:30 departure time.
She found me sound asleep. My
alarm hadn’t gone off (I think I the volume dial with my pillow). Which meant I only had time for a
shower. The house was as clean as it was
getting and whatever was in my bag was what was going on the trip, whether it
was needed or not. And I didn’t even
want to think about what I might have forgotten without a last check
through.
We got to the airport in plenty of time to check in
again. We had pre-checked in the night
so we got seats together but my printer wouldn't print our boarding passes. We also had to check our bags. Mom had borrowed some walking sticks from her
friend. She says they help her
knee. But they were slightly too long to
fit into any of our bags. The Westjet
lady sent us to Security to make sure we could carry them on. Security said fine. All that was left was our breakfast at White
Spot with Chris, a quick goodbye and thank you, and we were off (well, into a
slow moving security line followed by waiting at the gate but that is less
dramatic).
The flight was uneventful so I will do a quick compare and
contrast for Westjet vs Air Canada.
Westjet was helpful when Mom couldn’t find her ticket. They actually gave her access code to her over
the phone. When I tried that with AC,
they wouldn’t give me my access code because I couldn't prove I was me because I
didn’t have their access code. Point to
Westjet. Westjet had screens in the back
of the seats but they were just showing regular TV, and not very good regular
TV at that. There is really nothing on
regular TV on Sunday mid-day except cooking and home shows with lots of
commercials. AC has always provided me
with on demand TV and movies. Point to
Air Canada. No food, good staff
interactions, tie and tie. So, so far,
the contest is even.
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| Edmonton Airport (from my window seat) |
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| Ah, we were so happy on Sunday, whole trip ahead of us. |
We arrived in Winnipeg, got our bags and hopped in a
cab. Our cabbie was nice, warned us about
some neighbourhoods and suggested a good place to eat downtown is the food
court at the mall. We thought this was
funny but he may have had a point. There
aren’t many interesting restaurants in downtown Winnipeg, mostly chains that we have in Victoria. We got to our hotel which looks less elegant
when the rest of the street is included in the view. But the staff are very nice and the room is
clean. The common areas are lovely but
the room is showing its age. (Do not
look too closely at the carpet, which I learned while searching for the missing
remote control – keep your face at least five feet away from the floor, don't touch with hands).
The Malbourough Hotel
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| My picture doesn't look as fancy as the one they have on their website |
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| I liked the so-out-of-date-they-are-stylish-again touches |
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| Our room, as we were packing to leave. |
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| The Dining room. It used to be a men's club. |
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| The elevator was trying to kill us. Without fail, the doors would close on us as we were entering or exiting. |
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| The lobby was beautiful but I couldn't take a picture because it was full of people staring at me so this is the staircase from the mezzanine to the lobby. |
Winnipeg is not the most beautiful city I have ever
visited. But if I was a more interesting
person, I imagine it would be fun. There
are entertainment venues everywhere downtown, ballpark, hockey arena, theatres,
concert halls etc. MTS Centre has a
scrolling marque of upcoming concerts.
It seems every touring artist stops in Winnipeg.
As soon as we dumped our stuff in our room, we went out for
a walk. It was so hot, it must have been
close to 30 degrees. We went in the
wrong direction, of course, so our walk to the river was longer than it needed
to be but we found the mall and the shopping area so that was ok. Winnipeg reminds me of Toronto with its
wildly mixed demographics. I forget what
regular Canada looks like living in pasty Victoria. Downtown Winnipeg - Canada’s melting pot,
Downtown Victoria - Canada’s ranch dressing.
Around Winnipeg
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| Old Buildings |
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| New Buildings |
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| Pretty typical street scene |
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| There were huge marbles just lying all around the city. Maybe a defense against Godzilla, if you can't beat him, trip him. |
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| This is a working Nutty Club factory. No gift shop that we could see though. |
We were heading for the Forks which is a touristy area at
the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. Once we got ourselves turned in the right
direction, we found the main intersection of Portage and Main. I have heard about Portage and Main, reportedly the windiest corner in Canada but it is
just a regular, busy intersection. There weren’t even
any interesting historical buildings to make it interesting.
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| kind of boring |
We left Portage and followed Main until we
found a street that seemed to head to the river. We had three maps by this time, one the desk
clerk printed for us with arrows and written directions, one we had ripped out
of the tourist brochure in our room and one we found on the street called ‘where’s
my parking spot’. How we got lost with
all of these is a mystery, although probably not much of a mystery to anyone
who knows me and mom well.
Before we got to the river, we could see the new Museum of
Human Rights. It doesn’t have any signs
but I had read about it and guessed (correctly) that that was what it was. It is a nice looking building. More interesting was the festival going on
next to the building. We had stumbled
into a Pride jamboree. Lots of fantastic
costumes and huge crowds of people having a great time, live music, tent
market. We wandered around for a bit but
when we finally found the entrance to the river walk, we moved on.
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| Museum of Human Rights, on the way to the Forks. Terrible picture, nice building. |
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| Pride event |
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| Crowd listening to the concert. |
The river is not anything to write home about (despite my
composing a blog about it). Brown, fast
moving. Only birds I saw were Canada
Geese and some mallards. I think I saw a
grebe but it was a boring grebe (Pied). We just stayed on the path and skirted
the Forks business area, restaurants and shops.
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| Historic Rail Crossing converted to a pedestrian bridge across the river |
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| View from the Historic Rail Crossing, you can see the modern rail crossing not far away. |
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| Buffalo statue with the far bank in the background. |
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| This was on the other side of the river. |
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| Geese! |
Eventually, we stopped at a place called the Crab Shack that claimed it
was having a grand opening. This may
explain why they were completely unprepared for the masses of costumers
arriving from the Pride event. They were
out of seafood except mussels and all beer except boring big brands. We stayed anyway and it was fine. I had nachos and mom had mussels. Our seats were right on the river so we had a
nice view of Winnipeggers enjoying the beautiful day.
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| The Crab Shack |
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| The view from our table |
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| Dinner |
The next day, we got up early and partook of our free
breakfast. This place doesn’t fool
around with stale muffins and bruised apples.
Full service, made to order breakfast included with room. We both ended up getting the continental
anyway but with oatmeal, bagel & cream cheese, fresh fruit, yogurt and
coffee. Great deal.
We needed to do a bit of shopping. When Mom went to use her borrowed walking
sticks, one of them would not lock and had an ominous rattle. During our wrong direction event the previous
day, we had found an MEC store. We
popped in and they said they would look at it.
We went in the next morning but they couldn’t fix it. So, Mom bought new fancy teal blue ones. Next stop, Portage Place, the biggest mall I
have ever seen excluding the West Edmonton Mall. Mom had forgotten to pack any t-shirts. The weather report for Churchill was 18
degrees and we still had sunny Winnipeg to deal with. How hard can it be to find a t-shirt. Well, the mall gave a real picture of the
socio-economic situation of downtown Winnipeg. Not
rich. All of the clothing stores were super-discount. It is hard to believe that the t-shirts were
too awful to even be considered for just a few days but they were. I tried to convince mom to take the one with
the Chihuahua dressed as Michael Jackson but she said no.
We did find some cheep-o slippers (remember the carpets in
our room?) so we bought those and then it was time to head back to the hotel to
wait for Uncle Paul and the Martins.
Gail was sick so she couldn’t join us but we lucked out. Uncle Paul’s son Peter and his very lovely
wife Audrey joined us.
By the time we were to meet, it had started to pour rain
even though it had been nice in the morning.
Peter picked us up at the hotel and we all headed to the Forks for lunch
at the Spagetti Factory. We got to see a
bit of the middle part of the Forks but it was raining so bad we didn’t get to
explore. But lunch with the Martins was
so nice. Mom had not seen Peter and
Audrey since her brother’s wedding and hadn’t seen Uncle Paul since Grandma’s
funeral. No joke about weddings and
funerals bringing family together. But
this time, no special event, just a wonderful visit. It was casual and we got to sit around, drink a beer and talk. We got caught up on Paul’s family and what everyone
is up to. Peter and Audrey were so welcoming. Peter reminds me so much of my uncle Murray,
in looks and personality. I had always
thought Murray looked like his father but seeing how similar to his maternal
cousin makes me rethink this.
The Martins
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| From left - Uncle Paul, Muriel, Peter, Joanne, Audrey. |
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| Mom and Uncle Paul |
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| Mom and Peter |
As much as I enjoyed Peter and Audrey, Uncle Paul was the
star of the show. He is 94 now. He talked about the old days when he and
Grandma were growing up and when my mom and dad moved to Winnipeg just before
my brother was born. Mom stayed with
Uncle Paul and his first wife Enid.
Apparently, Enid was the one who taught my mom the mothering basics of
feeding, bathing and not dropping baby. It
has been so long since I saw my Grandmother, it was nice to feel a connection
to her again through her brother.
We spend a couple of hours with the Martins before it was
time to call it a day. They brought us
back to the hotel. Then we re-started
our hunt for appropriate summer weight t-shirts. Winnipeg has an elaborate under/over-ground pathway system so we wandered through that for what seemed like
forever. We found a store that had a few
acceptable tops and mom bought them so we would never have to think about
T-shirts again. A quick stop at the
dollar store for batteries for me and a brush for mom and back to the hotel for
dinner.
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| Historic Bay Building, attached to the walkway. |
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| Rain, from Sky Walkway. |
My class started yesterday so that is how I spent my
evening. Another excellent Malbourough
amenity, free printing. Via doesn’t have
wifi on the train on our route so I need hard copies of everything so I can
be up to date for when I can post again.
However, I did discover that this computer does not have office suite
and I need to create a power point by June 14.
So, I had to buy one month access to Office. Nothing like typing my Visa number into an
open Wifi system.
We are about to leave for the train station so I will post
this without pictures for now. Internet has been down all morning until just now. I will
have wifi again in Churchill on June 5 at which point, I will upload photos and edit for any spelling or boring bits (haha, if I took out the boring bits, what would be left)
