transit tales from Edmonton

Edmonton, being flat as usual

When I picked up my luggage at the Edmonton Airport, I was startled to notice that my luggage was vibrating. WHY WAS IT VIBRATING. Suddenly I became afraid that a security incident might follow, and I could only see two possible explanations:

1. Someone had planted a bomb in my luggage. Do bombs vibrate?
2. It wasn't a bomb, but something else that vibrates. And then I would have to have an awkward conversation with airport security officers ("I..don't remember packing this. Why would I pack this for Portland?? Also, isn't the more important question how did it turn itself on? ARE MACHINES GAINING SENTIENCE?")

Not wanting either scenario, I immediately dug through my suitcase (with admirable courage, I should add, given Possibility #1) and found the source of the mechanical buzzing.

It was Rob's beard trimmer.

It had been a dramatic trip so far.  When we landed in Yellowknife after leaving Cambridge Bay, we got off the plane just as the boarding call for our connecting flight to Edmonton had been made. But we had to go through security. From the other side of the security gate, we watched as passengers lined up for our flight...and as the line grew smaller.  By the end we got through security - an exercise that seemed purely ceremonial, because I accidentally had my fishing knife on me and nobody seemed to care -  the last of the passengers had gone through the gate. We had just barely made our connecting flight, literally at the last second.

Our next connecting flight would turn out to be just as dramatic. We left Edmonton late and landed in Vancouver with just fifteen left to somehow go through security again, US customs and border security, and then sprint across the entire freaking Vancouver airport to a tiny little gate in Narnia to board our connecting flight to Portland. We literally ran. Amazing Race-style. Carrying all of our carry-ons. I felt so out of shape.

We arrived at border security, panting and sweating like any respectable person you'd like to see at your national border.  The security official told us we had to wait until our luggage was transferred. In the meantime, while we caught our breath, the security official chatted us up about a suspicious Muslim man she had seen in her neighbourhood the other day.  It was an odd moment, especially since she was Muslim herself. I wasn't sure what to say. Was this a test? In the end I just smiled and nodded, and eventually we got to go through. We made our plane, but barely. And definitely panting and sweaty.

But while we were in Edmonton, staying overnight for our layover, it was good to have a chance to relax.  I had stepped off the plane in Edmonton, I felt hot and confused. I had grown accustumed to the -45 degree winter of little Cambridge Bay. All of a sudden I was in the city, hot and confused. There were loud sounds outside our hotel room - were those gunshots or fireworks? (It turned out to be fireworks.) But eventually I let myself unwind.

hotel hot tub

okay fine, I'll enjoy some tuna tacos

Ric's Grill

It was nice to have a chance to explore Edmonton a bit as well. We took a cab to Whyte Avenue, which everyone assured us was the cool neighbourhood. We had forgotten about city concepts like traffic jams and commutes, so it took us a while to get there, but we enjoyed the sights along the way. The endless flat prairies. The signs for the snow hill and the Edmonton gun club. The billboards for Peelerz ("WE SUPPORT BIG OIL"). The endless flat prairies. Yes, Edmonton's pretty flat.

Whyte Avenue

DaDeO's

Dadeo's Po'Boy

checking out my favourite hiptser hotspot (yes, Edmonton has those) - the Sugar Bowl

trying out some Alberta beer

A survey of Canadian cities in seven days: Edmonton

Wrapping up my stories of each Canadian city I visited during my seven day sprint across the country:

Wait, why am I in Edmonton?

Was I supposed to be in Edmonton?

Why is there even a flight between Edmonton and Calgary? The flight attendant sprints down the aisle, sliding cups of juice at us in the few minutes we're level in the air before we make the descent again.  There isn't even enough time to make a cup of coffee. This is one of the most irritating layovers for me, except maybe the Ottawa to Montreal flight. That's even shorter.

layover in Edmonton: Canadian Hudson's Tap House and the Sugar Bowl

Every now and then, when we're travelling we end up with a long layover in Edmonton, which is a major hub for a lot of Northern travel. While we were in town, I was hoping to check out downtown for the first time, but Edmonton, like many of the Alberta's communties, was busy being flooded that day, so we decided to head over to the Mall instead, where it was dry inside.

By the Mall, of course, I mean the great West Edmonton Mall, one of the largest malls in North America. I had been to the Mall before, but it was my husband's first time and he wanted to check it out.

How large is the West Edmonton Mall? It is larger than the eye can see. As you approach the Mall, you cannot at any point really see its entirely in one shot. Once you go inside, you think, "Eh, it's pretty big, I guess."  But then you come to the realization that you cannot see the entirety of the Mall from the inside, either.  It just goes on and on and on.

morbid art display or lazy display case decorator?

fast food Korean barbecue! What an amazing idea!

Having just come back from a two week long shopping trip, we weren't much in the mood to go into yet another Bluenotes.  However, we were hungry, and were therefore eager to check out the strip of restaurants in the area of the mall known as Bourbon Street.

There were many, many options of chain restaurants, but the one that caught our eye was Canadian Hudson's Tap House, mainly because they were displaying this special menu:

That's right, an entire menu dedicated to bacon. We were originally looking for a place to try some delicious Alberta beef, since we were in Alberta. To be fair, we've probably been eating Alberta beef all this time in Nunavut, but we wanted to eat Alberta beef in Alberta. With that said, it was pretty hard to turn down a bacon menu.

my grilled bacon macaroni and cheese sandwich, combining three of my favourite things: grilled cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, and bacon

 

washing down all that bacon with some local Alberta beer

Rob ordered a brisket sandwich made with beef served with mustard and gruyere cheese, so we did get to try some Alberta beef after all. It was so juicy and tender it almost rivalled my grandmother's jangjorim. Almost.

feeling full after all that bacon

After our lunch, my buddy D came to pick us up.  D has been living in Edmonton ever since he came back to Canada from Afghanistan where he served in the military.  He will be marrying his fiance in Mexico next spring four days after she does an Iron Man. As you can see, my friend D is not a boring guy.

It was still raining outside, and parts of the city were flooding.  Not exactly patio weather.  D took us the Sugar Bowl Bar, which gave us a glimpse of downtown.  Edmonton's an odd city, unlike other Canadian cites I've seen. There aren't very many tall skyscraper buildings, and it's very spread out - even the downtown core doesn't seem very dense.   

"Here we are!" D announced as we pulled up a to plain brick building.
"This is a back alley."
"This is how we get in."
We entered through the back alley, passing two young gentlemen having some sort of ambiguous interaction.
"What are they doing?" I asked.
"They are having a silent stand-off."
At that moment, I unexpectedly remembered that sometimes this city is called Stabminton. 

Despite the unconventional entrance, the Sugar Bowl turned out to be a lovely place, full of young professionals and artsy types. The menu had one page of food and like ten pages of beer, which is why D likes this place: "It's the perfect place to go after a Saturday morning run, to grab a beer and a cinnamon bun."

The beer selection was impressive too; for instance, there was a number of Belgian beers I hadn't seen since the last time I visited Belgium. I ordered myself a bison chili, which was bison-licious.

And then it was time to go back to the airport to fly to Yellowknife.  As usual, my stay was too short. One of these days we'll have a chance to explore Edmonton deeper, beyond the Mall and the airport. Hopefully at a steakhouse.

in Edmonton, kind of

I arrived in Edmonton, completely overdressed in my winter coat and wool scarf. I was sensibly dressed for the Arctic, where I'd be heading next, but for now, during my layover in Edmonton where it's sunny and warm, I looked mildly ridiculous.

The flight was relatively smooth, minus the part near the beginning where the pilot announced that one of the motors wasn't working but don't worry, we'll take care of that within five minutes. Despite my skepticism, he was right.

I had approximately twenty hours to spend in Edmonton, which was just enough time for me to go out and try to get a taste of Alberta, if I could decide on what I wanted to do.

West Edmonton Mall was not my first choice of sightseeing attraction, although I wasn't sure what was. I remember reading tips in music magazines on how bands can avoid getting stabbed in stabby Edmonton. When I asked my friend from Edmonton what would be a nice walking tour of downtown, he replied "Oh no, don't bother walking around downtown."

My friend had suggested that Whyte Avenue would be nice, so I asked the front desk at my hotel how to get downtown.

"Downtown Edmonton or downtown Leduc?" the hotel clerk asked. He suggested that I go to downtown Leduc because it turned out we weren't actually in Edmonton proper anyway.

"What's there to do in downtown Leduc?" I asked.

"Oh, not much," he replied.

Sigh. I decided to go to West Edmonton Mall. Capitalism always makes it easy to go shopping.

Because West Edmonton Mall is one of the top tourist attractions, I was able to climb into an airport shuttle to get there, one of those old white vans that reminded me of the sketchy combie buses I use to ride all over Namibia. I sat next to a sullen young woman who punctuates all of her sentences with disdainful sighs. The other passenger, an older male, tried to engage her in conversation.

"Are you here to party on campus?" he asked her.

"I'm here for a funeral" she answered. I decided to let her be sullen, and watch the scenery. Edmonton is flat all around, and the suburbs look like the suburbs back home. Do you ever notice that Canadian suburbs all look the same, no matter where you go? I love the Canadian landscape.

West Edmonton Mall is pretty big. But then, when you hear about the biggest shopping mall in North America (and the fifth largest in the world), you've got a lot of expectations about something monstrous that you'd get lost inside, like the casinos of Las Vegas designed to make you lose track of time so you can wander inside spending money infinitely. Like I said West Edmonton Mall was pretty big. You certainly couldn't fit the whole structure inside a single camera picture. I was full of so many questions. What is inside? What kind of stores do you have to fill up the continent's largest mall? And was that a sign for a shooting range? Oh, Alberta, I have arrived.


The shuttle dropped me off at the Fantasyland hotel, which was once the subject of a major intellectual property litigation case against Disney that we learned about in law school. I hurried through the lobby and took in the sights. Little boys getting military buzz cuts at the barber. Little girls in pink shirts carrying fake pistols, pointing them at babies in strollers, also holding fake pistols (oh Alberta!). Young Asian couples speaking to each other in sign language. A young skateboarder, sleeping against a wall on his skateboard. Immigrant kids learning to skate wearing jean shorts, speedily passed by white dads training their little boys for hockey. Adventure golf, two word I never thought to put together.



Not to feed the flames of old litigation, but the whole place reminded me of a Disneyland for adult consumer whores or maybe a Las Vegas for teens. There were different sections of the mall with different "themes", like Europa Avenue, designed to look like the streets of Europe (or maybe kind of like Disney's perception of Europe?), and Chinatown, which not only featured Chinese gates but a T&T market. As well as other traditional Chinese shops like Rogers Wireless and Stitch It.




There was also a Bourbon street, which contained a lot of the restaurants that we don't have in Ontario that I've missed since I lived in Vancouver - Earl's, The Spaghetti Factory...and of course there was a Hooters.




There was also a huge food court with like five Chinese fast food places with no discernible difference between any of them. That was where I spent my lunch. Hey, I am not always classy or cultural. In fact, I am rarely so.

It was only after my big greasy lunch that I discovered the roller coasters. Galaxyworld is the world's largest indoor amusement park, with the world's largest indoor rollercoaster. The rollercoasters made loud boom sounds that sounded like jets. I was, as you might expected, disappointed that I had discovered the awesome rides only after eating my large lunch. Unlike Canada's Wonderland, there weren't any lines for any of the rides.




West Edmonton Mall also has the world's largest indoor water park, which features a fake beach area with a fake beach bar, a huge wave pool, and numerous water slides. It obviously has a fake feel to it, but it's also quite brilliant to have all these things indoors, given how cold Edmonton gets for a big chunk of the year. It's nice to escape the cold winter for a few hours and catch a few waves in the warm 26 degree water park.



Oh yeah, the world's largest indoor water park also featured the world's biggest indoor bungee jump. Which looked, to me, incredibly scary, but then so did the wave pool, maybe because I almost drowned in one when I was younger, trying to save another kid.

After a while, I realized that I'd spent all this time in the mall without ever coming across the shooting range. I began to question whether I was actually in Alberta. Also, I began to wonder if the mall featured a nap room. There was just so much to see! Sea lions, real ones (I had thought they were fake until one ran along side the pool to follow its trainer). A marketplace chapel. Next to the chapel, a store that I accidentally walked into that appears to sell apparel for strippers. A tattoo, piercing and hair salon, a combination that I guess makes sense, but I'd never seen before.


what do you suppose it's like to be a sea lion trainer in a mall?



Despite having spent hours wandering around the mall (I did a circuit around the whole thing four times) I didn't end up buying much. Ever since I moved back from Africa, I haven't been really in a mood to buy things. You'd think it'd be the opposite, emerging from a shopping drought after spending the past year living in modest Namibia, but I guess I figured out how to live with less stuff. I've been wearing my stuff out, even if my family and friends are begging me to throw them out for getting so holey. Still, even though I didn't walk out with a pile of shopping bags, I was glad for the chance to experience the largest mall in North America. Now if only they could build a fake beach with a fake beach bar and indoor wave pool in Ottawa. Next time I come here, I'm eating lunch after I visit the amusement park. Also, I'm trying out the shooting range - if I ever find it.

this was the closest thing i found to the shooting range - a kid's game