Food glorious food (Lake Louise to Edmonton via Banff)

Road trip ... yay. As previously mentioned Canada is big. Bigger than Texas. Bigger than Australia. In fact, bigger than the US. (Sorry folks, it's true. Google it.) So it takes a while to drive from one place to another, especially outside the main cities. Today's drive was from Lake Louise to Edmonton. Why? That's a really good question. Inexperience.

It is always difficult to work out where to go and how long to spend there particularly when it's uncharted terrain. Even if you have some inside information, as we did. In retrospect we would have done somethings differently, but that's the nature of travel. I have never done a bush walk once. I always do it a second time to get it right. Travel is like that too.

The road to Edmonton was fairly uneventful although, as previously said in the last post, we took a detour to Banff for breakfast and had a wander around this delightful alpine town.  Very picturesque and in hindsight, we would have been better off staying here and simply doing a day trip tour to Lake Louise and the ice fields.  That way we would have also made Jasper. Banff even has free parking! 

Once we had breakfasted with a couple from Minnesota who shared our table in the very busy artisan cafe called Wild Flour (highly recommend it and its coffee), we drove through the wheat fields and ranches of Alberta across a vastly different terrain to what we left behind in the Rockies. Can't complain about the road system here in Canada.  Dual lane expressways everywhere and NO TOLLS!!! It's just that the drive was dead straight and dead boring, like the Stuart Highway back home. At least it has wedge tail eagles eating road kill. There isn't a lot of road kill in Canada, that we have seen. A couple of porcupines and some small furry thing that had more blood on it than a model wearing fur in a New York fashion parade. It could have been a mink I suppose.

Down the gun barrel straight highway there were a lot of signs purporting animal life. Elk.  Deer. Moose. Whatever. None of it proven. Except for the signs. The rolls of hay swept by. Fields of wheat, corn, lucerne, this time we really could have been in Australia out Bathurst way.

We skirted past Calgary. A drive-by will never do it justice, but it appeared to be a series of brand new dormitory suburbs. The houses all looked very similar, down to the paint. It appeared to be like the suburbs in Australia, massed housing in one area, retail in another and business/industrial somewhere else again. A world designed by car makers and purveyors of gas (as they say here) because you need a car to work and shop and therefore to live.

Finally we reached Edmonton. Glad we have a GPS because there is as much construction/deconstruction here as in Sydney. It was not easy to navigate to the hotel in the heart of Downtown, but we did.

Entrees: octopus and prawns

The usual inner city driving stuff follows: find street, miss street, swear a bit, re-negotiate route, drive around the block twice, at least ... you know the drill. Hotel found. Car parked. Eventually. Bags safely in room. Hmmm ... time to think about dinner.

Tripadvisor. We settled on Sabor a tapas/Spanish/Portuguese influenced restaurant. To say my faith in Canadian food was waning would be an understatement, especially after Whistler and its pub food culture, masquerading as fine dining. Or the Fairmont Chateau at Lake Louise and its 'resort' style food. OMG. Sabor is something else. Food, wine, service ... beyond anything in Canada to date and all at a reasonable price. Hence today's title from the classic 1968 musical Oliver, based on the 1838 novel, Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. You see my discerning reader, good literature is fashionable forever.

Seafood paella and salad

We spent less tonight than we did on two burgers and a bottle of wine at the Fairmont at Lake Louise. I've said it before and I'll say it again: price gouging. And don't believe spin stories of transport costs. Petrol wasn't hiked up to the same extent as food and wine. They all arrived by truck.

The only down side to dinner was that Sabor is not open tomorrow - it's the Labor Day holiday in Canada. As an Australian who has often lamented the loss of public holidays for the family unit, I'm not about to complain. But, damn, they were good and there was so much else on the menu I could have eaten. Ah, well, first world problems.

Sydney or Edmonton? I'm not certain.

The intention was to post this and to write another blog about Edmonton. A walk around the surrounding area this morning demonstrated that was not such a good idea because there is not much to write about. It is a city. It is the Labour Day holiday and as such there is not a lot going on here. Mind you, in terms of Labour Day I'm not sure what they have to celebrate - low wages, one week annual leave - I can't imagine why people aren't queueing up for a piece of that. Some of the retailers commenced operations at noon in deference to the holiday but many and particularly restaurants are shut for the entire day so the downtown streets are all but deserted. Even finding somewhere for breakfast proved to challenging, but we settled on a cafe associated with the hotel and they served granola and yoghurt and toast. Yum, no sickeningly sugary food or plates piled high with eggs and bacon today.

Then there is the resemblance between Edmonton CBD and Sydney CBD. The photo should sort that out for you. There are no signs as to what they are doing but the disruption goes for blocks and is clearly keeping people away from the city centre. The sign at the entrance of the shopping mall that is attached to our hotel tells people they don't need a hard hat to come inside.  

The remainder of the day will be spent preparing for the flight back to Van tomorrow and finalising some reviews and resting and reading. And thinking about tonight's dinner at The Creperie. A little bit of France, we hope, in the middle of Canada.

The next blog will likely come from Vancouver International Airport on Wednesday if you are in Canada's time zone and Thursday if you are back home in Australia.

Until then ...