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Well it was an alarm call this morning, well almost as Trevor woke up a minute before it was due to go off at 8am. Bathroom and breakfast over it was down to reception to check out, and a taxi ride to pick up our hire car from a new location as downtown was still without power and the Avis office closed. We had only booked a small car but got given a Ford Escape for our three hour drive to Edmonton. We set off on Highway 2 north, and shortly after stopped at a rather swanky mall (Iron Mills) to satisfy our caffeine fix for the morning.

The drive up to Edmonton was just over three and a half hours. We had already travelled down this road or at least half of it on our detour from Banff to get to Calgary so the first hour and a half was spent looking out of the window

staring at things we had already seen. Not that there was anything wrong with the view. We were driving through serious farming land all the way to Edmonton. These were prairies that stretched as far as the eye could see and the landcape was flat right until you hit the horizon. Gone were the snowcapped mountains and running streams, here we had cattle farms and crop growing fields with traditional red painted barns dotted here and there.

Now Edmonton is actually the capital city of Alberta, you would think that it would be Calgary purely because it is known all over the world (probably because it hosted the winter olympics) but no it's Edmonton, had you heard of it before ??

Well we arrived to a mixed bag skyline, not so many shiny towers as we had seen in Calgary but there was still that running river running through the town. This time it was the North Saskatchewan River and one that had not overflowed.

We found our hotel right on the edge of the river and at the bottom end of downtown. Its called The Chateau Lacomb and it's a 1970 circular hotel with a revolving restaurant on the top floor. We were lucky enough to get a room facing out to the river and it was actually quite pretty. With no time to spare we headed off back in the car to drop it back off to Avis then start a new adventure.

Now our first impressions of Edmonton were not the best.

After dropping off the hire car we walked back into town and stopped off at the mall as Trevor needed to use the boys room. Hanging around all the doors to the malls were overweight mums dressed in bikini tops pushing young babies in buggies with shirtless tattooed boyfriends in trackie bottoms and baseball caps. We don't want to stereotype at all, that not our thing and in reality they were doing no harm but honestly there were a lot of them and lets just say they needed some serious help from someone like Gok Wan (yes even he could help them, bless them).

Now what Edmonton does have, surprisingly, is some rather unique architecture. We left the mall behind and headed off to the civic square or Winston Churchill Square as it is called here and the town hall. Its a great 1970 cube building with a massive glass pyramid coming out of its roof. In fron of the hall was a huge paddling pool with fountains that sprayed in from both sides. It made the building look quite impressive. It was an absolutely boiling day here today, touching 30 degrees so in a city very warm indeed and the pool was full of all the kids from the young mums and dads that we had just met round the corner cooling down under the cold fountains water. There was also an arts market taking place in the square so it gave us some hope that Edmonton might have a bit more to offer.

Right next door to the city hall is The Alberta Museum of Art. Now we have no idea what kind of art they have on display as we did not go in but again the building itself was quite remarkable. It looked like a Frank Gherry building with waving steel that seemed to wrap around the building in crazy shapes (look at the photographs) with glass portholes here and there. My guess is that it had actually been here a long time but had aged incredibly well, that what you get for investing in good architecture. Again along the square was the local theatre complex, three large council run stages all offering different programmes to suit different tastes....Edmonton was looking up again!

Leaving the city behind we headed over to The Louise McKinney Park and walked the trail by the side of the river. As we siad it was a boiling hot day here today and there was almost no air and we both managed to get bitten by god knows what as we walked. There was a paddleboat coming up the river that turned out to be a day tripper boat that you could go on although we are not sure where to? It was not one of those romantic New Orleans style paddle boats but a modern hull with a paddle at the back.

After a good walk around we headed back to the hotel mainly to get changed, it was that hot and sticky that there was no way we could go to dinner in out walking clothes.

Revived and refreshed we headed out to dinner and what turned out to be a fabulous meal for a great price as well (unusual for Canada). It was an Indian restaurant that we stumbled across (well to be honest we followed two people leaving the hotel as they looked like they knew where they were going and they went to the Italian next door).

Dinner eaten and we were determined not to just go back to the hotel tonight so we went on what became a mammoth walk. It took us right out into the residential suburbs of the city past the mission and a number of saloons that you or I would never set foot in. There was an area that we walked through that made us feel like we needed to pick up the pace. They were probably more interested in the contents of their shopping trollies (pushing around their worldly possessions) or smoking on their cigarettes but you know when you find yourself outnumbered...it can be intimidating.

We turned back round to the city once we reached rows and rows of wooden clad houses with verandah style porches. It actually felt a lot more american than other Canadian towns we had been in before but after our slightly nervous walk up we chose a different walk back down to the city that took us through a huge Chinatown. To be fair it was a real mix of Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese....all living together in a hotch potch. All the phone boxes had little pagoda style roofs on them and the street light had be modelled in the oriental style al painted red with gold detailing.

After walking nearly four miles we headed for a beer in the only rainbow flag bar in the town called Woodies, a bar playing music videos of all the hits you have heard a million times before. It was reasonably busy but after out mammoth walk we drank our pitcher of beer and headed back to the hotel. There is no real rush tomorrow morning as to be honest we dont have that much to see here in Edmonton, believe it or not the guide books all mention that an out of town mall is the one thing to see and by the sounds of it its going to be quite unique but more of that tomorrow.

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