Winnipeg (and bridges!)

After dropping George off at airport for his flight home we went to hotel. Our rooms were on the 18th (top) floor with a balcony and a pretty sweet view. On the elevator ride I saw some pictures of a pretty cool looking cable-stayed bridge, and right away knew that that would be the first thing to visit. Went to an indian buffet restaurant with anthony, and came out completely stuffed with some pretty excellent food. Went back to the hotel, got my camera and took off to find the bridge. And it was totally worth it - an impressive cable stayed bridge that also had a restaurant hanging off one side, all balanced precariously on a single pier. Went on a 2 hour photoshoot of the bridge, walking all around it and up and down both banks on both sides. I probably get too into bridges, but they're so cool!!

While I was trying to see the bridge from all angles I also found some other cool things - a graveyard, cool waterfront areas, and some other bridges :). The big white thing at the end of the one on the left is a huge chunk of concrete used as a counterbalance to raise up the bridge to let ships pass. I thought it was a large sign from the distance until I walked under it and saw that it was a couple meters thick. I had a much larger appreciation of the small steel columns holding it in place after that. Oh, there was also the future museum of civil rights in that area, which is a pretty impressive structure. The engineer who designed the glass structure/cladding used to work for MTE, an engineering firm in waterloo that my dad works for, and with whom I spent a co-op term working for.

Decided it was getting pretty late, and we had to be back at the train at 9:00 Saturday morning cause a fuel truck was coming to fill up the tank for the generators. So I started heading back to the hotel, and eventually came to a large intersection that had no pedestrian crossings. I didn’t want to turn around, and saw a stairway going down with a sign that said ‘pedestrian underpass’. So I headed down, and turns out it was the beginning of an extensive network of tunnels and bridges (Even more bridges! Hurrah!) between buildings that allowed for travelling through most of downtown all while staying indoors! It was probably a couple kilometers in length in total. It meandered through an underground shopping mall with food courts and offices and boutiques, then went up a couple stairs and passed through more office buildings and malls and shops with bridges over streets between the buildings. Was walking along the second level of a mall when suddenly there was a big ‘whoosh’, and a jet of water blasted up beside me through an opening in the floor up past the third floor, then fall down again. Pretty cool! And the best thing about this place was that it connected to the hotel I was staying in.

Decided again that it was getting pretty late (close to midnight at this point), so I headed back to the hotel. But then I found a grand piano sitting right by the elevators to go up to my room, so I stopped and played until someone came by and said I should move on. After that I finally went to my room.

Saturday morning there was supposed to be a fuel truck for the generators between 9 and 10 at the train, and they were supposed to call and give me a 30 min warning. Anthony and I decided to go to the train for 9 and do chores until he showed up, and good thing we did cause we were almost at the train at 8:50 when I got a call from him that he was trying to find the train. So much for a 30 min warning. After he filled up the fuel we went to the casino that was right by the train yard. Our plan was to go to the roulette table, bet $20, and then walk out. He put it all on the middle third, I put all on the last third but decided last second to move $5 to the first third so we had them all covered. Too bad I did, cause it landed on the last third. I still walked out with $45, a 225% return. Not bad for my first time in a casino. We went out for lunch, then I went to the Manitoba museum. I had been to a couple museums at this point, and was starting to think that most were pretty similar – some stuffed animals, pretty rocks, arrowheads, broken pottery, etc. But I was very pleasantly surprised at this one. There were lots of exhibits about the tundra, which was completely new for me. Also a fair amount about the railroad, which was cool to see how important it was for the economy of an entire province. Most impressively there was a full sized ship complete with mast and sails and rigging. They also had an exhibit where the floors and ceiling and walls were all made out of mirrors, and it was really cool and disorientating.

After going through that museum I decided that going to Churchill is pretty high on my bucket list – tundra, polar bears, the arctic ocean, and northern lights. Walked around some more, visited the cable stayed bridge again, and went back to the hotel.

I set my alarm for 9:00 Sunday morning, but the stupid thing didn’t work and I woke up at 11 instead, which meant my whole morning was wasted as I had chores to do in the afternoon. We did our shopping and cleaning up and finished around 5ish. It was still light outside, so we decided that I would take the rental car, go explore where I wanted to, and return it when I was done and take a taxi back. I went back to the bridge area and walked around the market and walkways and paths that were in the area. It was getting dark, so I went back to the bridge and said goodbye, dropped off the rental car and went back to the train.