We arrived in Canada on Wednesday evening after months of planning and 19 hours travelling. The flights were long but we enjoyed watching the world go past, starting with the clouds clearing to give us a cracking view of our beloved Islay, to seeing the sea ice and glaciers in Greenland. For the last three hours or so we were looking at Canada itself and that really helped us understand for the first time the size of this enormous country, along with just how sparsely populated it is (sure we knew it was big but the reality took some getting used to).
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| Icebergs, glaciers and mountains of Greenland |
Our change of planes in Iceland went smoothly enough, with the exception that we think our bags were left outside in the rain for the hour and a half we were in the airport - the wet had soaked through both our outer cases and our rucksacks and a lot of stuff was damp which would have taken more than just the 5 minutes to load them from the trolley onto the plane to achieve. We were pleased though when we got onto the second plane to be able to watch them put our bags onto the plane too so we knew that transfer had safely happened.
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| Wet bags in Reykjavik |
So we finally arrived, collected our bags and our hire car and got on the road into Edmonton. We made it safely to Adam and Morgans house despite the new car, right hand drive, new road layouts and not having much of a clue where we were going. We were immediately stuck again by the scale of everything, particularly the size of other vehicles on the road. Most people around here drive trucks apparently... and they are not small!
Our hosts in Edmonton have been lovely, greeting us with news that they'd got the teapot out specially and they'd let us loose in their attic where there was plenty of space to spread out our things to dry. We slept fairly well despite the 7 hour time difference though once we'd woken up at 5.30 there was no way we were going back to sleep.
Our plan for our days in Edmonton had been to take things gentle, not knowing how either of us would react to the jet lag. Thursday morning we wandered slowly toward the centre of Edmonton, first going into a sewing shop and discovering a larger collection of patchwork material than either of us had seen in one room before, and then visiting the highly recommended Duchess Bake Shop. We walked as far as the top of Victoria Park and the River Valley. Edmonton is a flat city based on a grid system with the exception that there is a river that runs through the middle surrounded by trees and parks. Coming across this as we walked caught us by surprise even though we knew this was what we were aiming for - again just the scale of everything was what hit us, are you spotting a theme here?
Aside from a few trips to supermarkets that has been about it for Edmonton. Jet lag has left us rather knackered and we decided to pause now rather than fail to enjoy the mountains. We did manage to cook a meal for our hosts on our last night with them - sausages, mash, yorkshire puddings and onion & red wine gravy.
Next stop, the Rockies...