Hrefna in Edmonton, Canada
[Departed on 9 and returned on 17 May 2015. Blogged on 03 June 2015.]
I traveled to the Edmonton area (specifically Spruce Grove) for a week-long work-trip this past May. Since the area is a flatland, and could be pretty much Anywhere North America, we didn’t go any specific tourist trips – except to the local mall, which happens to be the largest shopping mall in North America!
Some photos from the week that sped by (40 images total)
Good old Keilir, we meet again! Turns out Keilir has a wifi, which I neglected to buy into until very late. It did make up for the fact that Icelandair has barely updated the contents of their entertainment system in a very long time.
Meanwhile, everybody else was busy helping fix the garden at Finnur’s parents’ place.
The edge of Greenland.
The Atlantic Ocean right below.
Over greener lands.
We stayed at this very new Holiday Inn Express in Spruce Grove. It is so new that it’s just a bus stop by a green field on Google StreetView, and the address doesn’t exist in any driving database.
My roomy room.
My roomy bathroom.
The surprisingly nice view out of my window. My travel partners had to make do with looking out onto the parking lot on the other side. Mwahaha!
The lobby, where a touchscreen invited guests to leave TripAdvisor reviews. Or chat or something. That’s probably what the gaggle of girls are doing.
That whole area is under construction, with a building boom clearly under way. Oil, baby, oil! This hole in the wall was closed by the time we left.
The hotel is located besides residential housing complexes, and a big sports area, with shops not far away.
Just opposite the hotel was a very large indoor sports center, with a 25 m pool, kiddie pool, slide, a surprisingly huge and awesome hot tub with really strong jets, and uh, an ice rink, a number of other courts, a weight room etc etc. I’m very happy to report that I did indeed go swimming three times while I was there, and swam 1 km each time. Terrifyingly, the pool’s deep end goes down 3.8 m, and kids play on springboards there. I tried to get down to the bottom (ok, within 24 hours of landing) and my head almost imploded about 2 m down. I did not try again.
We had some time to kill on the Sunday, so we visited the huuuuge mall.
Weirdly, the shopping part of the mall itself doesn’t seem to overwhelmingly big, but there are all these OTHER THINGS like THIS HUGE WATERWORLD that make it the biggest mall in North America. I’ll post a photosphere I took if it ever becomes available on google maps.
At some point during the week, Finnur, sent me this, so I replied with …
… this! Look, I have worker-looking work clothes! Yes, I quite enjoy the ‘occupational therapy’ portion of my job.
We tried a few coffee places, Starbuck’s probably came out most consistently on top.
7.6 m!! Why not 8 m?!?!?
This and McDonald’s were the most popular lunch spots. Turns out McDonald’s now has a salad which isn’t half bad.
I don’t want no horemones! (that’s a spelling error)
Very frayed menus. Good food though.
We did go to a very big steakhouse one evening, where most of the waitresses wore very tight black dresses.
Proof that I went swimming on our last day there (Saturday 16 May 2015).
The weather turned Icelandic on our last day, cold winds, and rain.
The sports center seen from the hotel parking lot.
Commercial space under construction by the hotel. Behind the yellow cube are some shops, most notably a cafe, and Boston Pizza.
On our last day we also tried the #1 restaurant in Spruce Grove, the very homey Mad Platter.
It’s, among other things, a spice shop!
I’d go there again!
Edmonton airport functions ok.
Boring carpet though!
It’s got a distinctive tower-ish building though.
They have a lot of land to spread huge traffic structures over.
Industrial area. They’re building like crazy everywhere.
Flying over is very much like looking at SimCity, there are squares here and there that have random things built on them.
Some architect’s name has an R in it!
On the other end, at 6 am local time (midnight our time), we got to try the new exit-the-plane-into-a-bus-and-drive-200-m-to-the-terminal system. Which is silly, but ok, we’re crossing over where airplanes drive, so… fair enough?
Except our bus had to wait FOREEEEVER for the last two passengers to disembark, two lovely but very slow moving ladies.
Then we had to wait some more (grrrr) in a long security line in the new basement of the newest attachment to the terminal that has long since become way too crowded. It took about an hour to get from the plane to the exit, which is too long. I was not a particularly happy camper, but the weather was nice, and it was good getting home, so my sulking only lasted another facebook post or so…
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