It was a glorious day when we arrived. Cold, but not horribly so, and bright sunshine. We made the very short trip from the Immigration place to the Tourist Information Booth and a lovely lady helped us to find out all kinds of weird and wonderful things about Manitoba. We thanked her and headed north in the direction Winnipeg. This was possibly a mistake. We reached the city in the middle of the rush hour, there is a huge one way system.......we were only going one way but not always the right one.

We were getting tired so we decided to stop at the first hotel/motel we could find. There were dozens....all on the other side of the road. Eventually we found a Holiday Inn. Great!! Why not have a good first night. We pulled into the car park, followed the arrows round a sharp corner and came face to face with a sign saying 'Head Room 6.5 Feet'. Our truck was 11 feet high. There was nowhere to turn around and already we had four or five cars behind us. We pulled over to let them pass and I jumped out to try to guide Alan as he backed the truck around and over the ice. More and more traffic came in, I tried to explain but no one would listen but they got the idea pretty fast when they saw Alan's big end coming round the corner :o) Having maneuvered that far he had to turn the truck around because he couldn't back onto the main highway. There were two parking spaces to my right so I started to guide him into this space when a girl arrived and quickly parked in one of them. She could see what was happening and I hand-signed the question 'Are you going to stay there?' She seemed quite determined to do so. By this time I was cold, Alan was frustrated and worried, the dog was yelping and we were approaching divorce. So I signed again.....'OK suit yourself!' and continued to guide the truck into the now single space beside her. That did the trick :o) She moved. Hell it was only for five minutes while we turned around but it was not a good omen for our first day in Winterpeg.

After that though we managed to find a really nice hotel - quick thanks to the management and staff of the Country Inns and Suites. Then we went househunting........
Go to Chapter Nine

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