Day 2 - July 11 10:30 PM

July 11, 2010
10:30 PM

Today was a day to be spent in Edmonton.
Up at 9:00 for the included breakfast buffet which turned out to be really good.
Off to West Edmonton Mall for 10:20, even though none of the stores opened until 11:00. This gave us time to walk around and prove that yes, indeed it is a mall with several duplicate stores.

We walked past Galaxy Land but decided not to go on the rides.

At 11:00 AM we focused on the area near the water park.
S chose to ride a Segway. B, P and J all jumped on a trampoline while connected by bungi cords. Everyone seemed to enjoy the chosen activity.

We also saw Sea Lions briefly in the aquarium.

At 1:00 until 5:00 we spent time at the water park. Everyone had a great time in the wave pool and slides. Although the wave pool was fun, it wasn't as much fun as the wave pool in Disney World. The only one who gave this wave pool higher marks was D. Apparently during a particularly wild wave she reached out to grab onto something and found her hand "accidentally" inside the front of a stranger's bathing trunks. She claimed she swam away quickly and embarrassed but did admit he was a pretty good looking guy.

At 5:00 we left to do 1 hours worth of shopping and proved to ourselves that shopping anywhere, including West Edmonton Mall can be stressful and avoided at any cost.

We met at 6:00 at the Ice Palace and made our way back to the hotel had a quick change and off to Kelsey’s for supper. The service and food were great.

We then spent a bit of time driving around Downtown Edmonton checking out the sites including a street festival, City Hall, University of Alberta and Commonwealth Stadium. The game had been over for about 30 minutes when we got there. The general feeling was that Edmonton reminded us a lot of Winnipeg but with more interesting architecture. Edmonton seems to have claimed a lot more of the river front property and made it into parks.

Everyone has commented how much later the sun goes down here since we are further north. Basically it is still full light at 11:00 PM.

On the GPS front, I charged it last night using the adapter for my netbook. It seems to hold a charge well now and we will continue using it that way. It seems it can't be used and charged at the same time, but hopefully this will not be an issue on our shorter drives.

So it is off to bed for the trip tomorrow to Jasper.