Thursday 28th - Calgary

We ended up getting up fairly early today, the air-conditioning units are fairly noisy and can be heard through adjacent walls. We headed down for breakie which was very nice albeit a wee bit pricey, only to discover (after eating and getting it charged to our room) that the breakfast included in our room rate was not served in the restaurant but in the regency suite upstairs. As a result of this we found out well should have access to that floor and our cards got updated to access it. Other benefits of the suite are free tea, coffee, soft drinks and snacks, as well as canapés at teatime and a private bar.


Anyway after feeling decidedly bloated from the super huge breakfast we went for a wander around the Calgary armed with a map from reception which Chris took charge of as in his own words “my sense of direction is useless”! The city has a central pedestrianised street where most of the bars, shops and restaurants are, so we headed this way towards Prince’s Island Park which is a manmade island created by a chap called Peter Prince burrowing a channel through the city to aid his business however many years ago. It’s now part of a big wetlands project to help clean up storm water before it hit’s the river. There’s also a large picnic area a walks around the river banks. A lot of the river bank areas have been renovated so there’s walkways everywhere and various sculptures and monuments. It’s definitely the place to go jogging and cycling and even quite a few roller bladers and skateboarders. - Doh knew I should have bought my roller boots! On the wildlife front there’s lots of black squirrels which look quite eerie so we have a few photos just to prove we aren’t making it up. We also took a Ryan for a swim for the benefit of any BT bods reading this - he says he is enjoying his holiday very much and has lots of photo’s to show everyone.

From Prince’s Island we headed along the river path in the direction of the zoo. There was a minor scary moment as we passed by some druggies lighting up but the female joggers didn’t seem to bat an eyelid so we carried on. I have to say on the approach to the zoo and from the display maps it didn’t look huge, however, 4 hours later we took this though back. There was quite a lot of work going on in the zoo and various bits being refurbed, all the kids seem to get pushed/pulled around on go-cart trike things which were kind of groovy. We did quite a bit of walking around the zoo as the attractions were quite spaced out and there was a large botanics area with greenhouses - one of them with butterflies in but trying to photograph them was slightly tricky!

By the end of our treck which was probably a good 6km we were slightly knackered so we caught the C-Train back which are like the metro’s in Newcastle but a lot cheaper and the fare stages in the central downtown strip were free. Oh and they are kind of like trams in that downtown they run along tracks on the road which they share with buses.

Once safely reinstalled at the hotel (after some map reading once departing the train only to turn around and see the hotel right behind us!) we checked out the pool and hot tub which we had to ourselves. The pool was a tad cold to say the least so we spent most of the time in the hot tub!

As our cards were now fixed to get into the regency suite we thought it would be rude not to go and sample the canapés - oh and the cocktails of course!

………………some time later………

Hmm well the regency club was a bit of a let down, no complementary drinks (except tea, coffee and softies) and the savoury canapés were a bit limited, but there was a lot of yummy sweet things so I took upon myself to sample a scrummy dark chocolate mouse with a raspberry centre. Hmmmmmmmm. The other benefit of the suite is free internet access so we set up the techy side of this blog, and did email etc.

Back tracking to earlier we ended up having tea in a bar grill place called Milestones as it looked fairly popular and did posh pub grub as oppose to most of the other places that we a bit too fancy for what we wanted. The service here reminds of that in NZ where everyone is always asking you how you’re doing and what you’ve been up to and just generally a lot friendlier than the UK. After learning from last night we went for a main course only that turned out to be just the right size and was absolutely scrummy. They’re drinks list is called a ‘wish list’ and the cocktails on it are out of this world. We opted for a champagne cocktail each to start and shared a jug of Sangria for the meal. My cocktail tasted like a raspberry slush puppy and didn’t last very long! Chris being his usual self opted for a tropical mixture quite yucky to me but he seemed to enjoy it! After the drinks we were expecting quite a large bill but were pleasantly surprised and even got a 25% off voucher for the next visit which we both agreed we’ll use before we leave Calgary.