Winnipeg continued.........

Who knew that Winnipeg is a foodie town. There are some fabulous restaurants here and they all focus on local ingredients, featuring bison, pickeral and Berkshire pork. We treated ourselves to a few of these restaurant, however failed to try these local ingredients due our stinginess. We did manage to get some pretty damn good food though. We found some good eats in downtown and some great french food in St. Boniface. Dandelion eatery is an organic eatery that serves up a mean buckwheat soba salad.
Now you see it.......
Now you don't.......and no I didn't eat it all myself. But this was a steal of a deal. For $7.00 you can get this, close to 1L of Gelati from Nucci's. We had no idea that they used a garden spade to scoop.
InFerno's key lime pie, maybe not as french as our Duck Confit baguette or our spinach and camembert cream soup, but still damn good.

We did tour the legislative building inside and out, which was finished in 1921 and is the third incarnation. The stones are from Manitoba and are complete with numerous fossils gracing their surface. The white marble was imported from Italy and the sculptures, including "Golden Boy" were courtesy of turn of the century french artists.
Golden boy

The skylight lighting the entrance hall.The entrance way to the legislative assembly.
The domed roof over the entrance way to the legislative assembly.
The legislative assembly.We noticed an uncanny resemblance.

Now comes the segment of the trip that Kim (Katie's mom) has been excited about since the moment we first mentioned we were doing this trip. Now comes the St. Boniface segment. St. Boniface is a french community on the western shores of the Red River and is the largest french community west of Quebec.Riel Esplanade heading to St. Boniface.
A cool view of the bridge.Photo-off on the Riel Esplanade.

It is truly french and jam packed with history. The St. Boniface cathedral was the first structure built, in 1818 under the order of Lord Selkirk, who had established the Red River colony across the river in 1811. Sorry, I (Katie) love Canadian history and can get kind of carried away.

Just to finish off the history lesson though, I can't not mention Louis Riel. I will limit myself to telling you that he is not only the founder of Manitoba, but also the father of the Metis (the product of the union between the French settlers and the resident Natives). He is one of my canadian heroes and just happens to not only have lived in St. Boniface, but was buried in the cemetary in front of the cathedral.


Just as we were leaving the cathedral it started pouring! Like raining cats and dogs raining. We took shelter under a tree for a few minutes before braving the 100m run back to the cathedral and this is what happened in that 30 seconds:

We actually didn't mind that much, finding it quite fun and arriving in the cathedral with big smiles. The wedding party (the fourth one that we'd seen since our arrival an hour earler), however, did not look so impressed with the sudden turn in weather and its effects on their scheduled photos.



The sky that drenched us. The wet walk back.

B&K (mostly K this time)