Mall of Edmonton

We had a 9AM flight to Edmonton direct from Chicago and Rebecca's friends Ashley and Sarah were on this flight as well, along with her old coach Julie and several teammates. We met them all at O'Hare for our four-and-a-half hour journey to Canada. Upon arrival, we breezed through passport control and customs (after playing 20 questions with the immigration officers who seemed to want our detailed itinerary), grabbed our bag and rental car and drove to our hotel in West Edmonton. Our hotel, the Travelodge Edmonton West, had been arranged by our team coach, and to call it a dump would be an insult to dumps. We kind of expected this going in, given it was a Travelodge, but the hotel was old and musty. Then we found out the elevator had been out of service for two months and we had to carry our 50lb. bag up four flights of stairs to our room. If we hadn't prepaid, we would have left without checking in.

We were hungry, so we decided to go to the West Edmonton Mall, the largest mall in North America for lunch. We found an Old Spaghetti Factory, one of our favorite places, and had a good lunch. The mall itself was not very impressive to us. While it was large, there weren't that many unique shops, and unlike the Mall of America, felt just like every other mall we had been to. Janie and Rebecca did take a ride on a couple of the roller coasters and we watched a little hockey on the indoor ice rink. After walking the mall, we headed back to our hotel for a little while. There was a showing of the USA vs. China game on TV downtown that we considered going to, but Janie was worried about the parking and the crowds, so we instead headed to a local Hooters for some wings and beer. Unfortunately, it was also the night of the NHL draft, so that dominated a lot of the TVs and the volume, but we did get to watch the game and the USA win. Then it was back to the hotel before a team meeting and bedtime in the Dump.