Calgary

As 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.