Wednesday 27th - Calgary

We arrived into Calgary around 6pm local time, the flight was about 8 and half hours which given our usual flight times to NZ that we‘ve under taken in the last couple of years it felt relatively short. As far as Fly globespan go the flight was fine and there was plenty of food to keep you going. Drinks were a little bit sparce but you get what you pay for. There was a baby seating in the seats next to us but it was very well behaved and either slept or breastfeed so peace and quiet all around.

Calgary airport is very similar to Edinburgh airport only slightly bigger, we sailed through immigration, and after picking our bags up which came off relatively quickly we walked through what I supposed was customs where a guy took our immigration forms from us and we were free to go. We ended up in a taxi from the airport as there didn’t seem to be a shuttle service to our hotel. Initial thoughts as we drove in were that Calgary was very industrial and quite sprawling, it didn’t fill us with confidence for it being a very nice city. We were also a bit sceptical as to whether the taxi driver was taking the long route round but in the end it cost what we’d been told to expect from the hotel website.

Once safely installed at the hotel we found our room on the 15th floor. It has floor to ceiling windows and a bathroom nearly double the size of ours at home!

Taking into account of the time difference which we figure to be about 7 hours we were feeling kind of knackered by this stage, however it was still a wee bit early local time so we headed down to the hotel bar for nacho’s and spring rolls. It was at the point that they brought them out we remembered portion sizes are somewhat larger this side of the world! Needless to say we didn’t make much of a dint in the nacho’s but polished off most of the spring rolls. It was also the first time I’d had to sign my ’new’ name and I can honestly say not something I’d practised so I ended up just printing it - I’ll have to practise some signatures later!

We had a wee look around the pool area before going to bed but couldn’t get into the regency suit to check it out but as I can’t remember what the room rate included we’ll have to check it out tomorrow. We also ended up having a few unplanned trips in the lift as you need to use your room key to operate the lift and if you’re not quick enough it whisks you away to where ever it has been called to! Any way by this point it’s now 9.30 and we can’t keep our keys open anymore so off to sleep in the super huge bed we have!