New Year's Trip

Finally I update the review of our New Year's Trip! It took me really a long time ...

On Saturday morning (the 31st) I was preparing a small surprise for my friends. The night before we were talking about wearing suits, so I had the idea to wear one for New Year's Eve. Yet, I wasn't wearing the tie and the pants because it looked too formal to me. However, Yui, the Thai student, need almost half an hour to notice my special clothing :) (she seemed to be tired, for she hadn't sleep the night before)

I only miss a hat to look
like a chauffeur *smile*

Our plan for December 31st, 2005 was to drive from Winnipeg to Morden, the small town were we booked a motel room.

First Day: Trip to Winkler and Morden

After around one hour of driving we reached the city of Winkler.

The City of Winkler

Winkler was founded in 1888 by Russian Mennonites; today the city counts many ancient German mennonites as inhabitants. In Winkler we first had lunch at Dairy Queen (they are famous for good ice cream!).

Afterwards, we continued our trip to Morden, a small town close to Winkler (by doing some research on this cities I found out that both cities have their own small airport *wondering*). Morden has a couple of beautiful old buildings and a few shops.

The Town of Morden

One of these nice old buildings (former post office)

Our Motel was situated outside of Morden, for around 100 bucks we got a room with 2 double beds and a bed sofa. Our motel room was nice, and I was excited that the motel also disposed a swimming pool and a whirl pool. After check in we decided to go back to Winkler, to do some shopping and to watch out for a place to have dinner and to spend our new year's eve.

By driving through Winkler we saw a dozen of churches, it was incredible - Winkler has probably more churches than shops!!! By doing our shopping in Canadian Superstore we could also meet many local women wearing traditional clothing (also wearing something like a black triangle on their hairs); according to a Canadian friend this should be traditional mennonites. Finally, we also didn't find a nice place to have dinner in Winkler, for there are almost no restaurants in Winkler (with the exception of fast food chains).

Back in Morden we finally found a steak house, unfortunately we only could have dinner there because they closed already at 10 o'clock. So we still had to find a place to stay for midnight (would be boring to spend midnight in the motel room!). After a short break in our motel room and a relaxing bath in the whirl pool we had an excellent (and a bit expensive) dinner at the steak house (a 10 oz steak with danish potatoes and veggies).

The waitress told us that there should be a bar open over midnight at the other end of the town. For it was too early (around 9:30 p.m.) to go there, I decided to have a look outside of Morden in order to find another bar/pub. We left Morden in direction of la Rivière, the place where we should go skiing the next day. For about 40 kilometres there was nothing, nothing, nothing and again nothing. With the exception of the small town of Manitou (my roommate told me that she spend the weekends during her childhood in Manitou because her father used to have a farm there) there was just nothing than farmland ... and probably I never saw before such a dark place at night (for there lives almost no population). We ended our night trip at la Rivière, where we should spend our next day. Because there was also no party there, we decided to go back to Morden.

We finally spent midnight at this bar in Morden, probably the only on open in Morden and Winkler, with lots of young people of the town. It wasn't a bad place, and with a beer and billiard /pool game we ended the year 2005.

The next day we planned to go skiing in la Rivière / Mountain Holiday. Thus we had to get up before lunch time ;) ... around 10:00 o'clock everybody was ready for leaving the motel.

Second Day: Skiing in la Rivière / Holiday Mountain

Actually, the countryside is really special, for a few kilometres before arriving in La Rivière there is still nothing such like a hill ... the countryside is flat.


Suddenly the road goes downhill and it looks like you drive into a hole ...


In this small valley is located la Rivière and and also the Holiday Mountain ski resort.

Holiday Mountain

The hill is pretty small, yet for sure it was good for any beginner. For intermediate skiers, the hill is a bit boring. However, Shinya, Yui and I rented a pair of shaped ski (= carving ski) and Brian a snow board. Shinya (who is also a good skier) and I tried to give a beginner's lesson to Yui ... after 1 hour she was almost able to drive down alone a small hill.

Brian was really motivated ... and he worked hard on improving his snowboarding skills.

After an hour or so, we had a small lunch at the restaurant of the resort. Later on, Shinya and I were driving down the hill again and again and had some fun helping the beginners back on their skis. And Brian was still working hard ... Yui prefered to wait in the restaurant, for she seemed to be too tired.

About 2 hours later, everybody was tired and we decided to go home. Back in Winnipeg we ended our trip with a nice dinner at Boston Pizza.