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Published: February 10th 2006
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The Mall!
Need I say more?? West Edmonton Mall
Shopping, shopping, more shopping
Charge it to Visa!
It's about 6AM right now and I had too much water to drink last night and can't sleep anymore on the train. So here I am writing in my journal. I'm just thinking that this is my second to last train ride before I get into Vancouver. Now what will the last few hours on that train be like? Will they seem to just drag on? I sure hope not!
Once we pulled into Edmonton Station it was really crowded inside the tiny terminal building. I had to wait for the checked baggage to come out so I decided to check out what sort of brochures and leaflets they had on offer about Edmonton. That's where I had the chance meeting with Michelle from Australia. We struck up a conversation and from there decided we'd split a taxi to the hostel. What luck!
Laura, Natalie and "Nathan" had to go re-board the train so I said my goodbyes to them and headed outside with Michelle to catch a taxi into town. It was only about 9AM once we were all checked in so we had the whole
day ahead of us. We got some instructions from the girl at reception on how to get around Edmonton by bus and we were given a really handy transit map as well.
So armed with a map and our $2 bus fare we headed for the bus stop. Our goal was to go downtown to Jasper Street and find the place that Michelle had to go to drop off her Social Insurance Number application. We are apparently both a bit dyslexic and got on a bus that instead of taking us north towards downtown, took us south to Southgate! Thank goodness Southgate is a bus loop and we were able to get on another bus that would take us to Jasper.
After a bit of a diversion, we were lucky enough to find Jasper Street and the building that Michelle needed. There wasn't too long of a wait at the office. I must have a "talk to me sign" attached to my forehead or something because I somehow started up a conversation with these two women who were also waiting. Mind you they did give me a few good points on what to see and do while I'm in Edmonton and thought it was funny when I told them that I took the long way to get to Edmonton from Vancouver...via Asia and Europe. lol I betcha if Michelle had taken a little bit longer I would have gotten to know those two women well enough for them to offer me some of their popcorn. haha
After this little pit stop we were going to head to the West Edmonton Mall but took a little pit stop at a local eatery to get some hot chocolate so as to make some change for the bus! Somehow we got side tracked before getting the bus to the Mall. Oh yes, Michelle wanted to open up a bank account since she's hoping to work in Banff in the next few months. While I waited at the bank and studied the transit map I somehow started talking to the receptionist at the CIBC. She was really nice too. She tried to sell me on Edmonton as well. I think I'll have to come back to Edmonton when it is the summer months since there seems to be more happening in the City at that time of year. Apparently a ton of festivals take place in the warmer months.
The bus ride to the West Edmonton Mall from downtown is less than half an hour so we made it there around noon where we made our first stop at Tim Horton's for some much needed lunch since we were feeling famished by this point. It's great that there are so many Tim Horton's around since it makes for a great meal at a great price. The hot chili really hit the spot as well.
I can't believe that we walked around the Mall for about 8.5 hours. At first we both thought, "This mall isn't that big." Then we realized that we missed a whole section...say half of the mall! lol Mind you, there are a lot of duplicate stores throughout the mall.
After such a huge day of shopping we thought we'd sit down for a nicer meal and ended up going to the Spaghetti Factory. Yum! I kept changing my mind as to what I wanted to have for dinner but ended up having the Neptune Chicken with some spaghetti, bread and salad as well as spumoni ice cream to top off the meal. Can you say stuffed? But it was soooo good!
After squeezing out of the booth at the restaurant we made our way to the bus stop and caught the #4 bus just in time. We got so busy talking about stuff again that we almost missed out stop! Thank goodness I looked at my watch and realized we'd been on the bus about half an hour and looked outside the window of the bus to see the "Crankpots" on the corner. "Michelle! This is our stop!" Thank goodness some other people were getting off at the same stop and had rung the bell to let the bus driver know to stop. Phew! We didn't have to walk the couple of extra blocks in the cold to get back to the hostel.
I did a little repacking, showered up and then it was pretty much lights out by that time...where does the time go? I guess you don't realize how much time passes when talking to some of our roommates.
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