Friday 29th - Calgary

Slight mix-up with the free breakie today, we thought it was on until 9:30 turns out it was only until 9 as we turned up at 9:05! Chris managed to persuade them to leave the bread and toaster out though so we got something. Luckily being the weekend tomorrow it’ll be on until 10 so not so much of a rush. Anyway after sorting ourselves out it was off for another wander around the city.

What we didn’t realise yesterday on our travels was that Calgary has a system of covered walkways called the +15. Basically they are enclosed walkways above the street level to avoid the traffic and noise of the roads. Anyway today we decided to try and get onto it and I can’t say we were particularly successful! We did however find the maze of shopping centres that are hidden between the walkways and various shop fronts. One of the centres has an indoor garden at the top of it called Devonia Gardens, with a variety of tropical plants and water features and some humongous fish!

After finding our way out of the shops (more difficult than it sounds!) we headed back towards Prince’s Island via the information centre which turned out to be an unmanned desk with a few local papers and leaflets, although we did find the free wifi spots and some frozen yoghurt ice creams like you get in NZ yum! Ice creams in hand we went to the park and sat in the sun for a bit and blogged away.

Forcing ourselves to get up we headed for Calgary Fort and definitely found the wrong side of town (and the salvation army) so there were down and outs everywhere but they didn’t bother you just freaked my out a little. Can’t say there was much to see at the Fort but there were lots of signs to read so that kept Chris amused for a while. The heat was really kicking in by this point and some liquid refreshment was required so we wandered back into town in the direction of the hotel. On the way we passed the Olympic Plaza, a park area with big water feature to commemorate the winter Olympics of 1988. It would have been a nice place for snacks but the café/bar faculties were limited so we found the Irish bar instead, can’t say it was what our idea of what an Irish bar is but they had Strongbow on tap so I was happy.

After being fed and watered we head back to the hotel and utilised the pool facilities - and yeah I know food and alcohol directly before swimming aren’t the best idea but hey ho. The evening canapés on offer tonight were rather scrummy they were kind of like mini puff pastry pizza rounds without cheese, so we polished off a few of them. We headed towards the trendy bars to see what they had to offer for tea but one menu wasn’t very inspiring and the other was blasting out the dance music and only had seats outside. We had a couple of drinks before we gave up and headed elsewhere. We ended up at a fancy Italian where I didn’t have much luck as first the wine I wanted they didn’t have any of and then the main course I wanted was off as well. I picked an alternative but the waiter chose to ignore me and brought something completely different! Still Chris’s was fine and what I ended up with was ok but I think it was a bit pricey for what it was.