Thursday April 24, 2008
I left home at aobut 5:30am, left Halifax Airport at 7:40. Westjet had run out of aisle seats, and I ended up in a middle seat between a large man and another tall man. By the time we arrived in Calgary five hours and twenty minutes later I was literally in pain. Calgary aiport was not very interesting. I was only there for about an hour, but unfortunately it was foggy and cloudy so I couldn't see anything of the city or the mountains - which I've heard is possible to see from the airport. All well.
Funny little bit of trivia: the 1919 Calgary Stampede had a pilot and plane, and for twenty dollars one could go for an airplane ride. After the event the pilot decided to take his two sons up for a minute. Shortly after takeoff there was a problem and the engine stopped. The pilot ended up landing the plane on top of a carousel; the other options were apparently less desirable.
After a very short flight to Edmonton I picked up my bags, met up with Lara and we headed off to the West Edmonton Mall.
It was sooooooooo nice to see Lara and to spend the afternoon with her. Amazing.
The mall itself was cool and very large! It was neat to be just walking along in the mall and then all of a sudden your standing in front of a skating rink! Or a dragon! or a sealion! or a Ferrari! or a pirate ship! or a wave pool! or the world's largest indoor triple loop rollercoaster (which is really loud, and really really fun for anyone brave enough to try it - although I did almost black out ofter the first loop...decided to pay more attention and make sure I breathed through the rest of the ride!).
I got back to the Edmonton Airport, ran in (thinking I was just in time for boarding), only to find out that the flight had been delayed from 8:10 to about 11:30. Unfortunately Lara had already left, so I had to just hang around the airport for awhile. I just got to Tim's before they closed. Whew! By this time I was getting tired, I found myself some seats, and did some reading, staring out the window, chatting with another passenger who was also just hanging around etc. The plane eventually did arrive, and they got it ready to go, I think, in record time. We got off the ground at around 11:40.
Friday April 25, 2008
The plane arrived in Yellowknife on a -20 degree morning, at 1:40am. -20 is very cold.
About 2 minutes after leaving the airport mom and I spotted some northern lights, so we drove out of the city a little and stopped on the side of the road to take a look. Very cool gray/green swatches of colour floated and morphed above us, at one point they got very bright. Behind them the cloudless night displayed a crystal clear starscape, and silouetted against the lights were some very typical northern trees. It was totally the 'northern experience', like something out of a Yellowknife postcard. Incredible.
We spent the day - after a few hours of sleep - driving around and checking out the town. We had poutine at A&W (much better than Chez Ashton in Quebec), which we ended up have to take out because of a fire alarm that start to sound... it didn't seem to bother anyone else, but a fire truck went by us shortly after we left... headed in that direction. hehe. I got some really cool native-ish leather slippers from a crazy general store that sells all kinds of amazing winter gear and shoes and whatnot. Mom's appartment is in the basement of a house, so the floor is really cold. The slippers keep me warm :)
We made our way to the Diavik head office (where Mom works) to make a copy of the photo ID they want. I also met Pat McCloskey (Mom's cousin's husband, head of security for Diavik), and the President of the company (Mom's Boss). We had diner with both of them later at Corliss' which was wonderful.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
I spent a lot of saturday listening to music and just relaxing. We did go out of a couple of times - once to check out the couple of malls downtown and to pick up a couple of minor things. We then went out again because I decided to see if I could find a new camera... I forgot (true story) my old one at Aunt Mary's the day before I left. I bought a Canon PowerShot S5 IS in the end. A very nice 8MP, 12X zoom digicam, which is very nice. The rest of the day was dedicated to playing with the camera (it has full manual control, which takes a bit of time to figure out, as well as full auto), playing Carcassonne with Mom, and then chatting with friends etc. on MSN.
Pics to follow...
1 comment:
Thanks for filling in the blanks, Liam! I had heard bits and pieces from the family site and from you and your Mom yesterday morning. Can't wait to see pics that you take with your new camera! I haven't sold your old one yet.
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