Tag name:Canada

Calgary

First published 1st March 2017 (Last Modified 9th January 2021)

Calgary City ViewAs I reported in my last post, I visited Lake Louise last week. As to get there I flew into Calgary, I decided that on the way back I would spend two nights in Calgary so that I had a day to explore this city rather than just use it as an airport.

As I discovered on my explorations, Calgary is a young City, in fact I think it's probably the youngest City I have visited. It was founded in 1875 (and so is actually younger than quite a few buildings in Romsey!) and, in appearance, can best be described as the closest match to a Sim City game that I've seen. There's plenty of construction and redevelopment going on (as you can see from the view from the hotel room to the right).

That said, there's easily enough to see for a day's visit - personally I visited the zoo and their science museum and took a walk out to the location of the original Fort Calgary (interestingly for a historic location of less than 150 years old, there are fewer remains than those of Southampton's city walls!).

I also took the opportunity to do some book buying, though you could argue that was just an excuse to get out of the cold - I would argue that my picture to the right actually makes it look warmer than it actually was! (minus 10 or colder!)

The major museum is the Glenbow Museum - this is actually one of the best museums that I've ever visited, three floors with a eclectic mix of history (from both the settler and native viewpoints, plus a good perspective of more recent history too), arts and geology. As if to make up for the age of the city, the geology exhibition includes the world's oldest rock.

oldest rock

Lake Louise

First published 28th February 2017 (Last Modified 9th January 2021)

Lake Louise

Last week I visited Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada to join Alasdair to celebrate his wedding to Erin. Getting there was actually pretty straight forward: a flight from Heathrow direct to Calgary, an overnight stay at one of the airport hotels and then a coach from the airport to the Chateau Lake Louise 1.

Frozen waterfall

After settling in (and bumping into Alasdair on the way) I did a piece of exploration. It is somewhat surreal to take a walk across the lake to the far end (as opposed to walking around the lake. The image to the left is a frozen waterfall at the far end of the lake.

Having a room overlooking the Lake makes for a spectacular view, the image above is from my hotel bedroom soon after sunrise on the Wednesday morning. After getting some breakfast, I togged myself up to some more exploring - the outside temperature at about 9am was minus fifteen or so, so pretty damn cold! As Lake Louise hadn't had much new snow for a few days, the ski and, in particular, the snow shoe routes were pretty compacted and so I was able to explore one of the routes up into the surrounding hills. The afternoon was the actual wedding (followed by its reception). Alasdair made a striking and handsome appearance in his clan's kilt (matched, of course, by the rest of his family!) while Erin made, of course, a stunning bride!

Thursday was another clear day, so I took the opportunity to explore in the other direction, following a snow show route across to the village of Lake Louise, about 4 kilometres away (Canada following the metric system much more than the UK does).

Footnotes

  1. Actually a large hotel complex built on the edge of the lake, but one that has been built reasonably sympathetically with its surroundings.