Canada Day 15: home time

We never fully unpacked in Calgary, as we were only here a couple of days, so packing this morning was quick and easy.

We weren't due at the airport till 5, and had to check out of the hotel by 12 noon, but they were kind enough to let us dump all our bags there while we had one last roam around the city.

It was a beautiful sunny day, so first of all we went for a nice long walk along the banks of the River Bow, on the hunt for a geocache. This was an unusual one, as it is indoors, in the office of the Calgary parks and recreation resource centre. They are well into caching, and keep a large ammo box in their premises, which is often visited and, being the closest decent sized cache to the city centre and therefore very handy for visitors, has become a bit of a favourite spot for travel bugs. It therefore seemed like an ideal place to drop off my hockeybug (whose mission is to visit all 30 NHL arenas in Canada and the US).



The young lady who worked in the resource centre was really friendly, and gave Connor a little keychain of a beaver with a Flames jersey on - what is it with everyone giving Cons pressies???. We bought $50-worth of cool ghost story books from her, so I guess that is a fair swap :)

We took the C-Train back to the Calgary branch of the Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch (food just as yummy as the Vancouver one), and then crossed the bridge onto Prince's Island to play for a while in the cowboy themed play park and say hello to some more of those Canadian black squirrels.


It seemed weird to see the river totally covered in thick ice and snow when it was so sunny and warm out. I guess when it has bedded in all through a long winter, it takes more than a couple of mild days to thaw it out....

After the swings it was up to the airport, and a long long flight home (we got back about lunchtime on Thursday, tired and ratty, but having had a lovely holiday)

And now the Canada blog is officially all done :)

Normal service will resume shortly....

Canada Day 14a - "that's one schizophrenic family right there...."

So,after the zoo, it was back to the hotel on the C-Train to get ready for the big game - Canucks vs Flames.


Of all the hockey we were due to see on this holiday, this was the one that Connor and I were most looking forward to. All the razzmatazz and showbix and FIRE of the Saddledome, plus the element of rivalry between mother (Vancouver through and through) and son (Calgary all the way).


We went all out for this one, rival jersies (I was Linden, Cons was Iginla), temporary tattoos, the lot. It was a lot of fun! It generated a lot of bemused comments from the locals - mainly along the lines of "how did THAT happen???" - and the classic quote from one man to his friend..."that's one schizophrenic family right there" :):):)



We travelled to the game on the C-Train, and the journey in itself was an event. The train was full of Flames and Canucks fans (loads of Bertuzzi jerseys), and the walk from the train station takes you right through the Calgary Stampede rodeo halls, which is kind of cool.



The game itself was one of mixed fortunes and mixed emotions, and mixed teams it seems - I am pretty sure that the Canucks who dominated in the first period (shots 21-7 in our favour, score at period end 2-0), were not the same team that skated round the ice so half heartedly for the rest of the game, leaving us with a regulation 2-3 loss, and, it turns out, a broken spirit to carry forward to the next couple of games :(



Connor managed to miss Iggy's goal in the 2nd as he was doing a poo :) (great timing, kid) - but was there for the 2nd and 3rd Calgary goals, which resulted in much joyous high fiving with the couple next us, while I sulked quietly.



Said couple were incredibly nice people - and at the end of the game, the lady gave Connor a Flames jersey! Yes, a proper jersey, in perfect condition, that her son has outgrown. She wouldn't let me give her a penny for it, just asked me to give her son a call from England to say thank you. Connor was absolutely over the moon - what a lucky boy!!!



At least I got to see my Canucks win twice out of three games on this trip - if I had come over a few days later and seen the frankly horrible Avs and Wild games it would have left a sour taste, that's for sure.



This is why I love RAW format.....something went horribly wrong with this photo I took of the boys lined up for the anthem, and it came out like this....




A bit of exposure adjustment (never could have fixed this if it was a jpeg), and it's perfect:



Close up: (wibble)



And talking of Taylor Pyatt (yes, a little tiny bit of that wibble was his :)), someone must have really wound that boy up in the tunnel! Because he dropped the gloves with exactly 3 seconds on the clock lol













More piccies:





Don't cry Bobby, your beautiful little girl will be born any minute....













If anyone picks up this picture and tags it with some lame comment about Luongo throwing in the towel,I will be mightily pissed off. I am writing this blog entry on March 29th, and am frankly heartbroken after witnessing Roberto getting pulled 2 games in a row. If the Vancouver crowd turn on him during this rare period of behaving like a human being instead of a superhuman goaltending robot, I will never forgive them. The man is f**king exhausted!!! I wish he could pack his bags and get back to Florida for a few days to be with his beautiful wife and 24-hour old daughter and forget about hockey for a while. Let Sanford earn his keep. Sorry - rant over :)


So that's game over, my little hockey road trip over, and the vacation almost over.

Just one more blog entry to go....

Canada Day 14: Sunny Calgary

I like Calgary.

Vancouver was beautiful, but a tad on the yuppie side. It would be a great place to live if you were 25, one of the beautiful people and didn't have kids yet, but for a middle aged homebody like me, it is better as a holiday destination I reckon. (We will definitely be back - for a start, we didn't have time to do the Capilano suspension bridge, and there's the little matter of GM Place :))

Edmonton was cool for families, but I tell you that giant mall would do my head in if I lived there because Connor would want to go there ALL...... THE....... TIME!!!!!

But Calgary, admittedly it's difficult to judge on a couple of days, but I could see myself living there.








We went to the zoo today - excellent zoo - the animals all look well cared for and their enclosures are large and well put together - and whilst there I got a killer toothache. So we left the zoo for a while and walked over into a nearby residential area to find a drug store. It looked like a really nice place to live. People were walking around smiling (probably because of the weather), everyone was friendly, there were clean and well maintained playgrounds for the local children, the school looked nice, everywhere was so well cared for and tidy.



Just a pity that it would be totally impractical for me to emigrate, because it's so appealing....



Anyway, daydream over, back to the zoo :)

We got there just after it opened, and headed straight into the prehistoric exhibit. I am glad that we did, as we had the whole huge dinosaur park to ourselves, and it almost felt like we had gone back in time and were exploring some long lost landscape. (We went back again later when it was full of kids, and it really wasn't the same experience....)



Connor loved the dino park - he enjoyed the model dinosaurs more than the live animals in the rest of the zoo :)

Not that he didn't like the rest - the bears and gorillas were big hits, as was the hippo - but he just REALLY loved the dino bit :)

And I enjoyed taking piccies of the animals and birds with my pap lens, that was already on the camera ready for the big game later on... (next post)

Canada Day 13 : onward to Calgary

(yes I know I missed day 12, we went back to West Edmonton Mall, same craziness as Friday....)


We had a stupidly early start today - taxi was booked and confirmed for 7:20 am (yawn).

I checked they wouldn't call to double check, as I didn't want Anam, Ian or Fay disturbed - so of course they rang at 6:30 and woke everyone up. Grrrrr.

Anam told them NOT to ring the doorbell when they arrived, and not to get there before 7:20 as we wouldn't be ready. So of course the doorbell rang at 10000 decibels at 7:08 am and woke everyone up again - double grrrrrr!


At least that gave us a chance to say bye to Fay, who is the most adorable little poppet you could ever meet.

The flight to Calgary was super quick, I think we were in the air around 35 minutes - one of those flights where you have barely sat down and strapped in and you are landing again.

The taxi transfer was also painless, as was check in, and we were all unpacked and settled in at our hotel before lunchtime.

The hotel is FAB, even nicer than the one in Vancouver (and a lot cheaper!). The rooms in our suite are big and comfortable, and the wireless access and in room video games are free (they were quite pricey at the other place). Only disappointment is that the pool is shut for the season, but as it is an outdoor one, and it's pretty nippy outside, that's a bit of a relief really :)

Here are some piccies of the suite. Cool, huh?


Once we were all unpacked we went for a walk around town, taking in the Calgary Tower en route.



You get a pretty amazing view from right up there, especially when you stand on the glass floor and look STRAIGHT DOWN, yikes.

Interestingly, given he is a pretty nervy kid usually, and has a lot of random irrational fears, Connor had no problem at all standing on the glass. He obviously has no fear of heights. Having said that, I don't, usually at least, but I found it pretty heart-stopping stepping out into thin air like that, it really made me feel quite light headed.



I tried to get Connor interested in the majestic beauty of the Rocky Mountains....but all he was interested in was the view of the Saddledome :) (home of his team, the Calgary Flames, who we are going to see tomorrow)




On our way back to the hotel we went for a bite to eat, met a giant mountie beaver, and then visited the Flames store in town, where Connor spent the last of his holiday spending cash on 1) a Flames hoody, 2) a Flames teddy bear, 3) a Flames zipper pull with CONNOR on it, 4) some Flames temporary tattoos for the game tomorrow and 5) a Flames Mr Potato Head (which I have to admit is very cool :))



Then back to the hotel just in time to watch the Oilers teach the Wild how hockey is played, a nice bath, catch up with the blog, and bed.

All in all a long but good day.