In transit

July 3rd to July 5th, 2018


After a night in Winnipeg, I fly on to Edmonton for 3 days. I find that the hotel fronts onto a four lane highway and backs onto the railway shunting yard. With the exception of one Thai Restaurant next to the hotel, everything is across the busy road.
I am really not in the mood for 'big smoke in flat country'.

Still, the internet connection is good, so I make the most of my time catching up on my blog.

One day, I walk a long way to the nearest pedestrian crossing to go across to the shops. I happen to find a Walmart.

My big suitcase has been damaged. The top handle is half torn out and is about to be completely torn - leaving holes behind - by stupid men who will still pick the heavy thing up by that particular handle. There is another handle on the broad side!.

While at Walmart, I look at some new suitcases, but decide against buying a new one because I don't want to leave behind the one with all the lovely souvenir stickers. Instead, I purchase a large roll of Duck Tape......everything seems large there.

By the time I have some food stuff as well, I am quite footsore and can't face walking all the way back to the pedestrian crossing, so I wait for a gap in the traffic and make a dash across the four lanes. Phew! I live to tell the tale.

Besides doctoring the suitcase and catching up on the blog, I am also writing some postcards. Now I need to find a post office. Google tells me there is one in that big shopping centre over yonder and it would take 27 minutes to walk there. Yes well, they are Google minutes. It definitely takes me a bit longer than that.
Edmonton seems a terribly pedestrian unfriendly city. Most of the way, I have to walk on a verge which is not very smooth walking. Besides that, it is also quite hot.

Getting there is not the only walking I have to do. There is a long walk to get to the post office - which is in a corner of a drug store - and an even longer walk from there to Safeway for some dinner and breakfast supplies. Thus loaded, I can't be bothered walking all the way back and take a taxi instead. A pretty expensive way to get some postage stamps and a few groceries.

This is the view from my only window. The hotel sometimes shudders when trains are being shunted around . There are five tracks, so at times it gets quite busy - even in the middle of the night.

I did have good intentions of visiting a park and a zoo, but getting anywhere in this city just seems to take absolute ages, so I have not done any sightseeing at all.

Not to worry, better times coming up!