Yellowknife is one of those trips where you have to go at least once in your life, but after you visit you have no intentions of ever going again. Lol. To say that it was a little cold is a bit of an understatement. I swear during the three days I was there I have never been so cold in my life. Let’s backtrack a bit first.

After grabbing breakfast in our hotel lobby, we took a shuttle to the Calgary airport. We had a bit of time to kill before our flight to Yellowknife, especially since we were delayed by 20 minutes. We ended up going inside the Maple Leaf Lounge, where for some reason, the lady behind the counter didn’t properly process the charge onto my credit card, so I got to go inside the lounge for free. Hehe

After eating our fill, we finally boarded for our flight to Yellowknife. The flight itself was quite short, and we could see the icy terrain from our window as we approached. Once we landed, we had to disembark directly from the aircraft onto to tarmac. It was about -20°c outside, so it was already very chilly just making it towards the door.

Once we grabbed our luggage, we took a shuttle towards the Explorer Hotel. After we finished dropping our bags off, we made our way over to the Visitor’s Centre, which was directly across the street. The staff inside were very helpful getting us information on the aurora forecast that night, as well as giving us directions to Old Town. After we went through some of the exhibits inside the centre, we decided to make the trek towards Old Town.

They had told us it would take around 10 minutes to walk to Old Town. While we were wearing our winter coats, we didn’t have our snowpants on, since we figured we wouldn’t be outside for that long. However, the trip to Old Town took more like 25 minutes and there were no stores still open along the way for us to warm up in between. (Remember, this was -20 something°c.)

The one thing we did do was trek up towards Pilot’s Monument, which is sort of a lookout point for all of Yellowknife. You could see the town below, as well as the ice highway. We were totally freezing by that point, so we tried to go back to a restaurant we had passed by along the way that was recommended to us – Bullock’s Bistro, which is apparently a local landmark on its own.

Of course with our luck, the restaurant was randomly closed that day. We tried searching for other restaurants in the area, but all of them were closed for the season. (T__T)

So we had to painfully walk back towards downtown Yellowknife to find shelter. (I say painfully because neither of us could feel our legs at that point.) The only buildings that were along the way back were a couple hotels. We ended up just ducking inside the front doors to warm up a little.

Finally we managed to make it to a Vietnamese restaurant back downtown. Honestly I can’t remember being outside in the cold for that long. It was soooo brutal. Once we ordered our dishes, I pretty much inhaled the food, hoping to get warmed up quickly.

Here’s where the strangest thing happened –
I actually ran into my childhood bff inside the restaurant!

She had just relocated to Yellowknife a week before and I had lost touch with her years prior, so it totally caught me off guard when she came over to say hello. I actually saw her when she came inside the restaurant, but there was no way I would think it was someone I knew, especially being in such a remote location!

Anyway, she was there with a couple of her friends. We briefly touched based, but made plans to meet the next night for dinner. After we finished eating, we grabbed a couple things at the closest plaza, then made our way back to the hotel to rest. We had signed up for an aurora viewing that night, so we had to get ready to leave at 10:30pm. I’ll post a separate entry about my aurora experience next. =)