welcome to oil country, day one

kris has to go to edmonton to do a 30 minute presentation for his work. the conference landed on a tuesday, so we decided to take advantage of his free flight. on top of that, the fairmont macdonald was offering ridiculously low rates to microsoft employees. with that, how could i refuse a weekend in edmonton?

we flew out on saturday morning. our flight there was uneventful, thankfully. we flew west jet, and were slightly disappointed by the lack of smiles that we received (not that we weren't treated nicely, we just kind of thought we'd see more, based on their commercials).

we arrived at 9:45am MST. i should tell you that the hotel lost our reservation (we discovered this when we called the night before to ask for an earlier check-in time). the call centre monkey told us they couldn't honour the cheaper rate and also told us we couldn't check in until 7:30pm, but to go to the hotel when we arrive, and they might be able to help us. so we did that when we arrived, and they gave us the cheaper rate, free parking for one night for the inconvenience and a slightly earlier check-in: 5:30pm. we were planning to go to west edmonton mall anyway, so we accepted their offer, stowed our baggage and off to the mall we went.

i have to say, i was a little disappointed by west edmonton mall. is it wrong that i kind of thought it would be bigger? what with all the hype, i thought it would be more than two storeys, and i don't know...just bigger. although we did enjoy the lack of provincial tax - i had been saving to buy some things for this trip. i bought a scarf, gloves and a new eyeshadow that i've been eyeing. all at 6% tax - woo hoo!

we went back to the hotel and took a nap in our beautifully appointed room. then off we went, to see the oilers play! happiness! my student got us free tickets, which was exciting...it took a little while for us to locate said tickets, but we eventually got to the correct ticket counter. platinum level seats! with club access! it was wonderful. the game was exciting and as fun as i thought it would be; thankfully i didn't build up this experience too much in my head, unlike west edmonton mall. and west jet. the best part was that the game went into a shoot-out, and we won! yay! it was so nice to see oiler logos and ads everywhere.

we finished the night with some beer and pub food and turned in by midnight since technically we had been up since 2:30 MST. zzzz...