Calgary. what can I say about Calgary?
Hmm. Well it was COLD!
(OK that isn't frost on the trees - it is pretty lights)
COLD COLD COLD COLD COLD!
There was snow everywhere, except on the roads and the better trod/cleared paths. This was a total novelty for me. OK, I have been To The Snow back 'ome but this is SNOW in a CITY! Not snow in some place two or three or five hours drive from home.
My thinsulate gloves were almost useless. Brr! But my thrummed mitten and my cashmere mitten were nice and warm. Thinsulate seems to work better in wind and natural fibres when it is calm. Go figure.
Go figure even more when you find a lush garden paradise in the middle of town. Devonian Gardens is an indoor garden with water features and lots of lush green plants (including a few Oz natives) slap bang in the centre of town. It is very popular with the locals who are starved of greenery in winter, even though it smells like a biology lab - that weird smell of mould mixed with autoclaved materials. Very odd. Just like these blokes having a nap in a nice "sunny" spot in the gardens. I love the way they play stacks on each other. Why settle for sitting on a rock when you can sit on aother turtle?
So Calgary. Calgary is definately a city in a hurry. Not so long ago it was a prairie town and now it is galloping. I am not dead sure the services or infrastructure there are coping terribly well with the influx of people. It was a nice change to see asians, etc, not just white people. I sorta feel that it is having some birthing pains as it grows up.
(Nathan had a nice little sojourn with a bunch of suffragettes. Gosh they don't make ladies like that these days - they are giants, I tellsya, much bigger than Nathan and he is pretty tall! They were giants of their time and now are giants in perpetuity.)
Does every city in Canada have one of these space age towers?
It took two goes but I eventually found M1 yarn. It is a nice yarn shop, quite spacious - I am used to Aussie shops which seem to be crammed with yarn, piles of it all over the place, bags threatening to land on your head. Aussie yarn shops are very into keeping yarn in bags - heavens to betsy someone might touch it before they buy it! I bought a particularly Lynne coloured skein of sock yarn.
I had a most excellent walk along the Bow River. Y'see I could see a pedestrian (but not boring) suspension bridge just down from where the road/pedestrian bridge crossed the river. It was getting near sunset and I was blessedly cold but I wanted to walk across the suspension bridge. So I followed the river path.
And I followed it
And followed it
(See the dot in the photo? Click for bigger. Yep, that's a bird swimming in the river looking for fish I guess. I have no idea how that bird's feet don't drop off - yes they have heat exchangers in their legs to keep the blood warm but really, why don't their feet just drop off with frostbite? Also is that a loon?)
And followed it
(At this point I should've realised that the river split in two and that the 500m would be a ways - it even has a pointer stabbing at it!)
and followed it....
Until I had almost walked to the zoo. Then I crossed a boring bridge and turned back up the island that the Bow River splits around about 300m after the road bridge.
It seems that the suspension bridge wasn't half a km away as it seemed to be. I was feeling a bit brrrr cold by this stage as I had not expected to walk so far. Still it was a good walk and the river was very pretty.
And we had our shiny new visas so life was pretty good!
Anyone for a game of frisbee golf?
Or maybe you would prefer a nice picnic with a backdrop of Calgary?
No need to bring the Esky/chullybun/cooler! If you want a coldie, just stick it in the snow for a while and she's apples 8-)
All good things must come to an end, so we moved on to BANFF!
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