Edmonton Vacation - Day 1

As part of being on the national board of AAA, Heather attends the annual general meetings which are held in different locations from year to year. This year's meeting is being held from Thursday, May 26th to Saturday, May 28th. And since Heather's flight and hotel for those three night was being covered by the Association, she convinced me to join her and make a vacation out of it by leaving a few days earlier.

We were scheduled to fly out of the London airport at 1:30pm but we left Woodstock at 10:30am. The drive to the airport took about 40 minutes and we were there fairly early. That gave us a chance to check our bags in (we checked in for the flight online the night before) and have an early lunch at Tim Horton's. We cleared security and entered the boarding area around noon. The next hour was spent waiting, making last minute Facebook status updates etc.

Did I mention that I haven't been on a commercial airplane in almost 19 years? That long time has definitely added to my fear of flying but I normally don't let my fears stop me from living. We boarded the plane after 1pm and I chose to have a window seat. Our trip to Edmonton was made out of two flights with a stopover in Winnipeg. At least that way each flight would be under two hours.

Heather spent the entire flight to Winnipeg talking to Jillian, a recent graduate from Western University. On the other hand, I spent the flight staring at the little screen in front of me, tuned to the GPS channel, and listening to my iPod. I was happy just watching the little map and anticipating the landing in Winnipeg. The plane landed in Winnipeg at about 2:15pm local time which meant almost three hours of waiting for the 5pm flight to Edmonton.

During that time, Heather bought us some head rest things while I worked on past posts for the blog. I was only writing those in Word as Wi-Fi at the Winnipeg airport was $10 for the first hour. As an FYI, it cost only $5 to purchase an additional 23 hours of Wi-Fi.

It was raining in Winnipeg throughout our whole stay there. Conversely, it was clear and sunny back in Ontario when we took off. The flight to Edmonton was pretty much as uneventful as the first one, although this time the aisle seat in our row was empty. The plane landed in Edmonton just before 6pm local time.

Edmonton downtown.

Once we recovered our luggage, we looked for a shuttle as the airport is about 30 minutes from downtown Edmonton. Heather phoned Crowne Plaza where we were staying and they told us to use the Sky Shuttle for which it cost $18 per person. After checking in at the hotel, we went for a walk downtown to look for a place to eat. By the time we found The Rose and Crown Pub and each ordered fish and chips, it was already 8:30pm (10:30pm in Ontario). While at the pub, I ordered Moosehead but apparently it is not a popular beer in these parts and it's only offered in a couple of places in Edmonton. It was a very long day to start our vacation.