Yesterday morning, we headed out on the Queen Elizabeth II highway, pointed north. It was something that had been on the “to do” list since moving to Calgary (lo these four and a half years): a family trip to Edmonton. Specifically, going to the West Edmonton Mall. It all started with Dad’s Christmas gift. Tammy and I discussed a number of gifts we could get with it, but in the end the thing that resonated was putting it towards this trip.
I made the hotel reservation based on my experience going to see a client in Edmonton in December. The hotel I’d stayed at wasn’t right at the Mall, but it was close enough and reasonably priced and had kitchenette suites to boot. We drove up on the Friday morning, and arrived at the mall a little after 11:00. We walked from the east end to where the World Waterpark is before walking through Galaxyland and having an early lunch. Then we grabbed our swimsuits and spent the afternoon splashing and sliding. We were there for four hours before finally drying off and having dinner at Boston Pizza on “BRBN St“. Then we left, stopped at Superstore on the way to the hotel and then relaxed. Tammy and I watched the World Juniors gold medal game, and then the whole family piled on the bed to watch “Music and Lyrics” off of my iPad on the TV.
The next morning, Ian and I were in fine shape: he’d hurt his foot somehow at the water park, and my knee was hurting from all the stairs. Nevertheless, our plan was to spend the day at the mall, doing the actual shopping part of the trip. Ian had Christmas money to spend, but he’s a worse shopper than I am. We split up, with Tammy and Miranda shopping, and Ian and I limping and being lookee-loos. We explored a lot of the mall, and I tried getting him interested in doing some of the other activities there, like mini golf or Galaxyland. We did ride the “Autosled” mini roller coaster once just so that I could say that we’d ridden something. 🙂 But despite his limping, he wanted to go back to the water park. I even dangled going to see The Last Jedi in IMAX 3D in front of him, but he was adamant. So he and I did a second (shorter – 2.5 hours) round at the water park.
Then we were done and off to Calgary again. It was a short trip, but obviously the water park hit the target with Ian. Miranda bought some art pens, jeans and books. Tammy bought a bag and a shirt… but I haven’t seen them yet.
Not a lot of photos: when most of the vacation was spent in swimming trunks, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity. Tammy took some of the sunrise on the way to Edmonton. I might insert one later. Here’s a picture of the sea lion show that we caught a bit of today.
Glad you enjoyed the trip. X’mas present well spent.