So let me start off by saying: I loved Winnipeg!
When we mentioned to people in Ottawa/Quebec/Toronto that we were coming here we got the odd “Why are you going THERE?!” as if it was an old dead town with nothing going on. Well, maybe it is normally(?) but this weekend was super cool, so we deffo made the right choice. My only regret is not staying longer.
First off, we volunteered at Festival du Voyageur. We were helping the Snow Sculptors. Day 1 we just shoveled/pushed snow around, but on day two they let us hack away at some bits & do some snow-sanding. It was so cool! We were worried it was gonna be super hard work too, but really the bulk of the heavy lifting had been done by the other volunteer the day before we arrived… so we had a pretty easy ride. (Lots of time chatting, exploring the festival & drinking coffee.) ☕
We got free tickets to the Festival as a ‘thankyou’ (aka. payment) for volunteering. We were going to go on the Friday & Saturday night, but I’d picked up a nasty cold from the flight, so we just stayed in watching You on Friday. On Saturday I mustered up the energy & we went though – it was sooooo good! We danced to jigs in the tents & raved a bit outside in the snow. My favourite artist was Les Rats d’Swompe – CHECK THEM OUT! 🎻💃
On Sunday we decided to explore “The Forks” which is pretty well-known. There’s a massive skating trail (I think 8km) so we skated all along it – from the Assiniboine, onto the Red River & then finally we carried our skates up onto the skate trail in the park, which was lined with lights & ended with at a big “Winnipeg” sign. We then headed back home to prep the food for the train trip which we had the next day.
And that brings us to today (Monday). Our train was at 21:30 and our check-out was 11am. It was a bit complicated as we had nowhere to leave our bags – the station didn’t open til 5pm, which says A LOT about the vibe of the city! Our AirBnB hosts kindly let us leave our bags there til the next check-in, but we still had a few hours between. We just sat in the station til the ticket office opened. We spent the time snacking, drinking coffee & chatting to an 85 year old man who was making the train journey to Vancouver after spending the weekend visiting his son.
When the ticket office fiiiinally opened we went dropped our bags & headed back to the Forks for some more skating, some food & a bit of shopping. (I got an organic soap for my handbag as I seem to be allergic to all the handwash here & we got a few postcards, one for my gran as it’s her birthday soon). After a few more hours, we then made it back to the station & hopped on the train.
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