We’ve all met people who say that they’ve travelled all over the place but when you ask them about something in their own backyard, they have no clue what you’re talking about.  I always laugh at them but those who know me know that I’m being awfully hypocritical when I mock these good folks since I’ve been to so few places myself that really aren’t that far from me.  In my defence though, I am slowly trying to correct that.  So when I was asked by my new employer to go to Regina for a week, I said, “Why not?!”

I’m not too sure if or when I spent any real time in Regina.  I remember going there at least once a year for provincial band festivals when I was younger.  I know I have old photos from the Legislature Building when my German exchange partner was staying with me and my family, but I don’t remember much about these trips other than being with the people I was with.  I have no other real reason to go either so I never bothered.  With this trip for work though, I found myself having a lot of free time during the mornings and evenings.  So, what do you do when you’re in a new city with nothing to do?  You wander!

We arrived on Monday and after a bit of relaxing, it was time to go to work.  Work here involved standing in the foyer of the local casino asking customers market research questions about their experience there.  I have never been to a casino before as I’m not a gambler, but it was certainly an interesting experience.  Okay, some of those experiences were not the greatest but I did meet some pretty cool people so overall, I really can’t complain much about the work part of my trip.  For those who are Riders fans, yes, I did see a few players over the week but I guess I’m a bad Saskatchewanian because I have absolutely no idea who they actually were by name.  Sorry, folks!

Tuesday was definitely a day of recovery for me.  After 10 months of migraines, it was definitely nice to have the mental capability to work again, however all that time curled up in a ball in pain definitely took a toll on the rest of my body so my doughy self needed sometime to relax and gear up for another evening of talking to people.  By Wednesday though, I was getting restless and it was time to go explore!

As our hotel was downtown and I tend to love busy centres anyway, I headed out the front door and began to walk around.  I can’t deny that I love the architecture here.  Gorgeous old buildings have been clean up and/or repurposed next to shiny modern glass (mini)skyscrapers with smatterings of flower pot laden open pedestrian walkways and green parks full of statues – it really does look like a lot of downtowns in other cities.  And I loved it despite the small size of it area wise.  But also like a lot of more modern downtowns, there really aren’t that many places to go.  Saskatoon seems to have a lot of bars, pubs, restaurants, and coffee shops downtown where as I didn’t see that many in downtown Regina.  Even Calgary’s downtown is fairly deficient in night life which is really unfortunate.  Especially if you don’t have a vehicle to drive out to the places where night life can be found!  Anyway, here are a few of the pictures I took:

After visiting with an old friend who just happens to now live in Regina, I spent my Thursday wandering downtown and relaxing again.  But on Friday, I decided to take the hike down to Wascana Lake and see the Legislature Building.  As I said before, I do have pictures of it in one of my old photo albums but I only vaguely remember the trip.  It is, of course, and absolutely gorgeous building so despite the tickle in my throat that hit me in the first days of my trip (damn you, microbes for always catching me when I’m travelling!), I made the trek down there by foot.  With my luck being what it is, not only was there an event being set up around the lake, but the building itself is under refurbishment.  Yes, it’s important work but that scaffolding doesn’t exactly make for good pictures as you can see!   Something that I know I haven’t done before though was to take a tour of the building.  I had heard of the tours before and knew that technically, the building is supposed to be open for the public so I popped in and was lucky enough to come in just as a couple other people were about to start a tour.  It truly is a beautiful building.

One thing that I kept missing while I was here was the fleet of food trucks.  I’ve been told that the food truck culture craze hit Regina before Saskatoon so I decided that I was really going to have to try something here.  Unfortunately, the way my schedule ran here, I was only able to make it to the locations after they closed.  So Saturday was set aside specifically to track one down.  But luckily enough, they were all in one spot again because Saturday is the second day of the week for the Farmer’s Market.  So back I went to City Square Plaza but this time, with money to burn!  After picking up a haul of homemade food stuff, I stopped at Diggety Dog for a bison dog.  I know North Americans eat too much meat and that meat production is terribly bad for the environment but seriously, the world needs more bison meat!   In other words, it was one yummy dog!

Overall, it was a pretty decent trip.  Yes, there were aspects that weren’t so good and some rather frustrating situations did occur but that’s all a part of life so I’m certainly not going to complain…to much.  As for the city itself, it’s definitely a nice place to visit.  I never completely understood the rivalry between Saskatoon and Regina as they’re both small prairie cities with high crime rates and a rural mentality but there are definitely some differences that would make it hard of me to live here.  Perhaps I just to spend more time here (and have a vehicle at my disposal), but while the city is probably prettier that Saskatoon in many places, I honestly don’t like the lack of culture.  Okay, there are way more museums but really, how often can you visit those in a month?  It was the same issue I had in Calgary.  Maybe I just didn’t look hard enough but I didn’t see much information about live music or funky neighbourhoods.  One ad in the official city guide book about a pub and another about a…well, the ad didn’t exactly say what it was, but after walking down there one afternoon it turns out it’s a coffee shop, doesn’t really make me say, “Yes, I would like to live there!”  Sorry, Regina, I guess I’ll be sticking with Saskatoon for a little longer!

 

Additional photos can be found at: http://patriciagakis.com/gallery/index.php/2014-Regina