Next Stop Calgary

After our 2 nights in Banff, it was time to get the bus (which we had prebooked) to take us to our hotel in Calgary. our home for 2 nights was the Westin hotel and was in the middle of the city.  We hadn’t made any plans of what to do in Calgary and we were a few weeks to early for the Calgary Stampede,  and so after settling into our room we took the city map we were given by reception and just went for a walk around Calgary.

Four blocks down from our hotel was the main street with shops, bars and restaurants, we then continued to walk along to the City Hall and Olympic Plaza and then up through Chinatown and past the Calgary tower. Calgary does have a C-Train Transit train which is free for the stops along 7th Avenue within the downtown area and the train does then go onto Calgary zoo and the fee is just 3.30$ CAD – so about £2.00 each way and ran very frequently. We decided on the following day as it was another nice sunny day that we would go to the zoo and our hotel concierge had given us the tip to make sure we got given a set time ticket to the panda enclosure – Panda passage- which is a new addition to the zoo.

The Zoo is split into 5 main areas – the Canadian Wilds (Mountian Goats, Bears, Elk, etc) , Destination Africa (my favourite zone as the Giraffes, Lion, Lemur, Zebras, Gorillas etc), Dorothy Harvie Gardens (flamingoes. Alpacas and where the butterfly house is) Eurasia (Giant Panada’s, camels,  Komodo Dragons etc) and then the Prehistoric Park which is great for kids interested in Dinosaurs.

I would suggest unless you are going to the Stampede that 2 nights is enough in Calgary, and the hotel staff said normally they would tell their guests to do day tours to Banff and the Rockies National Park – where we had just come from.

Last stop in our Canadian Adventure is Vancouver which I had been to before but my husband hadn’t, and I will tell you all about it next time.

Have a great couple of weeks

Kerry xx