Our trip so far

Well, we left for Edmonton on Saturday morning after picking up the rental car. A fairly uneventful 850km drive later we were there. It seemed daunting, and usually arriving after 8pm is scary, but when it's light until 11pm, it's not quite so bad.

We had a lovely dinner across from the hotel, and slept like logs, waking up to a beautiful morning. Not only was the "morning" doing it's part, but the city was helping all the beauty along too. We really liked downtown Edmonton. I mean, its not just green, but the streets are wide and clean, and the buildings are retro (probably not designed that way) and it's all very appealing.


Take a look



Claire in her natural habitat:

And, no, I didn't say: "Quick, look like you're reading. Im taking a picture".

On to the West Edmonton Mall. It's the biggest mall in the world. Well, it was at one stage. Anyway, its the biggest mall we've ever seen/been into. Quite something. They do, however, boost their numbers by adding stuff that doesn't really belong in a mall. They have a putt putt course, a full sized christopher collumbus ship, seal world, water world, amusement park with rollercoaster, and a hotel.
We decided to follow our travel book's advice and "go the whole hog" on the West Edmonton Mall experience and booked into the "fantasy land hotel" for our second night. Now it sounds awfully dodgy, but the "fantasy" part is because they make each room up differently. They have an african room, a persian room, a truck room, you get the idea. We chose the arabian, and it looked like this:
Quite nice, if maybe a little on the cheesy side. We could have done without the murals, but the jacuzzi in the room reminded us of our little flat in Joburg.

Finally, we had dinner in the "funky" part of town, which reminded us of obs and melville all at once. Now look at our faces.


Okay, will tell you all about jasper and vancouver (which we are just about to leave) next time.

That is all.