After an eventful evening yesterday in Winnipeg, it was time to explore the city. I wouldn't have fancied walking around alone. (Actually during the day - I'm sure I would have been fine!). But me and Chris started our morning with the free hotel breakfast, no bagels today - we had egg on toast. It was nice and a good way to start the day.
We checked with the nice receptionist, about what we should do while in Winnipeg, she circled a few areas on the map, and we set off. Our first stop was the folks. The folks is an area with market stalls, shops, restaurants, and a park with walks. It is surrounded by the river. It was really nice and the river was lined with orange and yellow trees. We had a bit of a sit down and enjoyed the sunshine. We walked around the park. After we had seen everything we wanted to, we decided to walk up the river to the Legislative building. It was only about a 10 minute walk. It was nice to have the sun on your back. Once we had arrived, we took a couple of pictures and then kept moving. There wasn't much more we could have done there. We walked back to the folks along the river before heading to exchange district. This was to the north of the city, and was a place to go as it was the location of many bars. Except we couldn't find any bars, and the planetarium was closed for refurbishment. This town really is quiet, and not a lot of stuff to do.
We were having few problems getting money out both our cards weren't working, so we headed to the shopping centre to see if the cash machine worked there. Finally they did- we worked out that not all machines had the chip readable part. They are stuck in the 90's. We walked up and down the Main Street a little before going to the art museum. It was a modern place, and it had a good exhibit about the history of Canada. We managed to get student entrance prices as well! Because we both look like students! Ha ha!
I need to talk about one piece of art in the museum. There was a bedroom stage in the middle of one of the large halls. A strange man was taking pictures of 4 girls that were in bedclothes - they were all acting a little strange. He was armed with a camera and a torch, and was moving a fan around the set to make it look windy. Me and Chris watched for a little while and walked away. Not sure that is the kind of art I like it was very weird. There was a good couple of pieces of art work. But a lot wasn't my cup of tea. We were able to go up onto the roof where they had a couple of statues. It helped kill some time.
We are getting another night greyhound bus from Winnipeg to Calgary. 21 hours this time, a piece of cake! Except we still had a few hours to kill. After chilling in the hotel for a little bit we decided we would go and get some food before going to the cinema.
We had dinner in place called moxies. It was a really nice place, and we had dinner sitting at the bar, talked to the bar man a lot, he had mates also sitting at the bar. They had some American football on the TV that everyone was watching. Food was really nice, and beers were nice as well. They tried to get us to drink a caesars. This is a drink that is like a Bloody Mary but it included clam juice! We decided to stick to the larger.
We talked about the greyhound buses. And they laughed a little bit and said you must see some character on there, we agreed! They were then nice enough to tell us about an event that happened on a greyhound bus back in 2008! I will tell you what they told us - we thought they were messing around. But of course when I left, I googled it - and it's true! If you don't like scary stories don't read the below (Mum & Liz maybe you shouldn't read this either!). Copied from wiki.
"The murder of Tim McLean occurred on the evening of July 30, 2008. McLean, a 22-year-old Canadian man, was stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized while riding a Greyhound Canada bus about 30 km west of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba traveling the Trans Canada Highway. According to witnesses, McLean was sleeping with his headphones on when the man sitting next to him suddenly produced a large knife and began stabbing McLean in the neck and chest. The attacker then decapitated McLean and displayed his severed head to other passengers outside who had fled the bus in horror."
I hope this doesn't give people nightmares. Don't worry - they do security checks now, And I sleep with one eye open. But don't you think it was really nice for the group of guys to tell us this before we were about to do a night bus. We walked to the cinema, and got our tickets, it was very much like the old ABC cinema in Crawley, the screen was tiny and there must have only been 45 seats. We were watching looper. The tickets were only five bucks that's like £3.50. Well I enjoyed it the movie, Chris said it was "okay". It was now dark outside, and luckily our hotel was only around the corner where our bags were. We had already decided we wouldn't mess about getting buses. So we just jumped into a taxi and headed to the Winnipeg airport & greyhound station. We didn't have a long wait, and it was nice the bus wasn't to busy. We both had 2 seats and managed to get some sleep.... Another long bus journey, we have to get to Calgary, so we have to do this bus journey!! Night!