FLAT prarie landscape

So in seven days we have passed through five provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and entered into Ontario) and adjusted our clocks from Pacific Standard Time to Mountain Time to Central Time and now in Ontario we will shortly change them again to Eastern Standard Time. Since our last blog entry we have been through Moose Jaw (Victoria had to stop since she has a couple of friends from there), Regina, Winnipeg(will tell you more about this experience in a minute), Kenora and finally Dryden from where this entry is being written.

Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan and I'm sure there are interesting things to look at. However, we drove in to town late at night and as we have learned by now; the road that leads into a city in Canada looks pretty much the same anywhere with fast food resturants, gas stations and standard hotel chains such as the Travelodge, Super 8, Comfort Inn etc. After some driving around we ended up at the Howard-Johnston.

It is probably worth a paragraph or two in this blog to talk about accomodations. After almost two month on the road, we have seen a variety of motels, hotels, inns and B&Bs. The standard, quality and expectations are usually (but not always) correlated to the price you pay and while we are not on a backpackers' budget, we've been trying to be a little thrify if the place is just somewhere to rest our heads before continuing driving the next day. On occasion we have 'splurged' a little when we find a cute town or place but for this driving portion of the trip, our motto is 'clean and cheap'.

The Howard-Johnston in Regina was 'clean and cheap', but also completely and utterly disorganized. The hotel was under renovations which made part of it look like a construction site and the drilling into walls (it felt like our heads) started somewhere around 7am in the morning. But the alarming part was the staff of the hotel. There were two girls working the front desk and Victoria is usually a very patient customer who rarely complains, but after the check-in procedure took almost half an hour and when we asked for directions and the girls couldn't even point out on a city map where the hotel was located, even Victoria had problems hiding her frustration. That incident, plus some smaller ones, made us not feeling too sad to leave Regina. Sadly so, as the city probably has so much more to offer than the experience of incompetent hotel staff.

Next stop for the evening was Winnipeg, Manitoba. The city is large and we ended up in the middle of downtown. Again, trying to be.. hmm... 'frugal', we found a hotel that looked fantastic on the outside, located in a beautiful building from 1914; the Marlbourough. The rate of a hotel room (about half of the Radisson across the street), should have given us a hint though..... The hotel had a pool, gym, restaurant and breakfast was included in the price which sounded great. Still.... the price should have been the clue....
We were woken up several times during the middle of the night by people in the hallway who after getting completely drunk had forgotten which hotel room they belonged to and decided to let the entire hotel know that they were lost. Strange characters were snooping around the hotel property and Victoria felt so uncomfortable she turned around and went back to the room after an attempt to go to the convenience store. The security guy at the hotel wore a bullet proof west and the place was just seedy.

The next morning we decided to skip the free breakfast in fear of what the restaurant would look like. We decided to give Winnipeg another chance by driving to the Forks which we had heard was a nice part of town. The Forks looks a little bit like Granville island in Vancouver with an open market housed in an old warehouse. It was quite charming and nice and we had breakfast there before going for a walk along the river and crossing over to the French part via Provencher Bridge which is an interesting masterpiece of architecture and engineering.

Robert and the bridge

Provencher Bridge

Leaving Winnipeg behind us, we soon entered into Ontario and drove through the town of Kenora which was a nice little place on a lake. Not being able to find Robert a proper pub, we continued to Dryden where we spent the night before heading towards Thunder Bay.

written by  Victoria & Robert on October 23, 2009 from Dryden, Canada
from the travel blog: Across Canada
Send a Compliment

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Just caught up with you again and it seems from the pictures that the weather has improved!!
I think that's the best way to deal with a goat and I'm sure Victoria will agree.
Dad says keep writing as it's fasinating to hear and see all your adventures.

written by  Fay Ryan on October 24, 2009

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Hello there, debonair travellers, love the photos and the blog.
Our relatives in Canada have just recommended Algonquin Park in Ontario. See following website: http://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/
Also if you're travelling on Eastern Coast, you might be heading towards Churchill? Please adopt a polar bear for me (I'm serious) if you go there!

Keep blogging,

Giulia & Ben

written by  Giulia on October 24, 2009

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