Friday, February 15, 2008

Toronto to Iqaluit... it only took 5 days

Go figure, I wake up Wednesday morning with a burning sore throat and a snow storm! What a fiasco. After a lot of driving and waiting, Air Canada promised to get me on a flight to Ottawa first thing Thursday morning. Thanks mom and dad for driving my luggage and I all over Hamilton Wentworth and the GTA!

The plane out of Pearson Thursday morning was scheduled for 710am but was delayed due to "flight management" and de-icing. If everything had been ontime I would have made my connecting flight to Iqaluit out of Ottawa with about an hour to spare. But, alas, I got into Ottawa five minutes after my connecting took off. So I meandered over to the First Air desk with all of my luggage and asked for my options. I could fly to Iqaluit on Friday and stay there until Monday morning OR I could stay in Ottawa for a couple of days and fly to Iqaluit on Sunday. I figured both my visa and the school board (who is footing the bill) would thank me for staying in Ottawa.

I stayed at the Southway Inn on Bank Street and kept a pretty low profile. Friday I went to the Museum of Civilization and perused the Peruvian, Aborigional, and current Aborigional Art exhibits. I then met up with my friend Rachel VanD who is currently completing her Doctorate in French at the U of Ottawa. It was amazing to see her! She is happy, truely happy, and she looks FABULOUS! It was a bit of a fiasco taking a bus to see her but after I begged a stranger to use their cell phone we were able to meet up and all was well... no wonder they call me wrong way! hahaha

Mel and Chris, friends from my Hamilton Posse, drove out Friday night to see Winterlude. Partly I think they were taking advantage of the free hotel room and partly to see me but they still maintain they were only in Ottawa to see winterlude hahahaha ohwell. Thankyou to everyone that offered to come to Ottawa to keep me company! And thankyou for listening to my request to stay home. Love you!

The flight into Iqaluit was great. First Air has good food and great service. Plus, the scenery is gorgeous .... I am having trouble uploading pictures right now but I will add them as soon as this silly blog will let me.

I stayed at the Frobisher Inn which is a cute hotel on the top of the hill in Iqaluit. Unfortunately the airport did not have luggage storage so I had to lug ALL of it to the hotel for one night. I met up with a woman named Dominique and we chummed around all day Sunday. She's from Ottawa and she works for a pharmeceutical company that sells vaccines for respitory problems in children. We went to the art museum in Iqaluit and also to the park. We also went to NorthMart... a Walmart knockoff that has a full snowmobiel show floor hahahaha. We then met up for dinner. We both went for the Arctic Char and Cariboo dinner. It was delicious. Cariboo is a flavourful steak. I'd eat it again. I slept very well and was up'n'at'em by 5am.

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