If you’ve only got a short time to spend in Calgary, check out this blog to get some travel inspiration on things to do!

Calgary, Alberta

HEY STRANGERS!

We spent the last weekend of January 2023 in Calgary, Alberta, to celebrate Jake’s 24th birthday. We didn’t have many expectations but Calgary surely would have beaten all of them!

Welcome to Cowtown…

We flew from Kelowna to Calgary with Flair Airlines, which may or may not have been one of the worst flight experiences we’ve ever had but we can’t complain too much for $80 return flights. We we’re due to take off from Kelowna at 8:40pm, a flight which ended up being delayed until 4am, meaning we lost our first night in Calgary. Luckily for us, we had booked an airport hotel, as we were scheduled to arrive late anyway, and they were so accommodating in shuffling our reservation around so that we would have somewhere to sleep for a few hours in the morning once we landed.

We grabbed a few hours of sleep in the Hyatt Place at Calgary Airport and then headed out to enjoy our first day in this big, white city!

Where to Stay

We spent the next two nights at the Hyatt Regency in Downtown Calgary.

We booked ourselves into a King room with a City View, although I’m pretty sure every room would be a city view given the hotel’s central location. When we first arrived to check in at around mid-day we we’re told if we wanted to check in before 3pm that we would have to pay $50 which was a shock, so instead we decided to drop our bags and head out to explore the city for the day. When we returned later that evening we checked in and headed up to our room to a lovely surprise for Jake’s birthday, a sweet treat from the hotel!

This hotel was great for a lot of reasons, the main one of course being the central location, we could pretty much walk everywhere we wanted to go and if something was too far to walk, like Calgary Zoo, then the tram station was right around the corner!

The room itself was super comfortable, the bed felt more like a super king, it was huge and so soft and cosy to come back to after a cold day exploring! It also came with everything you might need, a full coffee and tea bar, mini fridge, a closet and full sized desk. The bathroom was also fully stocked with shampoo, conditioner, lotion, body wash, q-tips, make up wipes and anything else you may have needed was easily requested! I actually forgot to pack make-up remover pads and all I had to do was call the front desk and they were at our door within minutes. I think our favourite things that came in the room were the robes and slippers which we made sure to make good use of.

One of the nights we had had an early dinner/late lunch so by 10pm we were starting to get hungry again so we decided to order room service. Unfortunately, as we spent so much time deciding what we wanted we actually missed the cut off for the full room service menu. Luckily, they also offer a “late night” menu that ran from 11pm until 6am. Thanks to this menu we were able to order a few snacks, I got a caesar salad and Jake had some sort of breakfast sandwich, it wasn’t much but it got us through the night and was a good little snack whilst we sat in bed binge watching TLC.

Another great feature of the hotel was the pool and hot tub area that we made sure to enjoy on our last night. The indoor pool is on the 18th floor, giving you a great view of Calgary Tower through the floor to ceiling windows. The pool area is fully equipped with tables, loungers and towels, as well as a hot tub and steam room.

What to do

• Devonian Gardens – FREE
  The first place we visited was somewhere we had seen on vlogs and instagram that we just had to see to believe. The Devonian Gardens are an oasis located in the heart of Calgary’s city in the CORE shopping centre. The botanical gardens offer a whopping hectare of over 500 trees, 50 plant species and more than 900ft of living walls, fountains, Koi ponds and even a playground to explore! The gardens home over 20,000 plants in total and is the perfect place to sit and unwind from the crazy city life outside, surrounded by nature. The gardens are located on the top level of the CORE shopping centre, right next to the food court making it easy to grab some lunch and have a picnic even in the cold Calgary winter!
• Visit the Peace Bridge – FREE
  Next up we wandered around the city, played in the snow a little and weaved in an out of shops for some warmth as we made our way over to the Peace Bridge. The Peace Bridge has become an icon of Calgary’s cityscape, spanning across the Bow River from Memorial Drive, a boulevard that pays homage to Canada’s peacekeeping efforts for the past 100 years, to Downtown Calgary. When we visited the bridge was under construction due to vandalism, however this is anticipated to be complete by Spring 2023. Below you can see the one and only photo we got of the bridge as it was so cold outside that both of our phones died on us! Maybe iPhones aren’t made for -27ºC explorations?

• Calgary Tower – $19 per adult
  The Calgary tower offers 360º views of the city of Calgary, costing $19 per adult for tickets bought in advance online, or $21 on the doors. The views of the city are amazing and complete with guides to educate you on what you’re looking at and how to find iconic landmarks across Calgary such as Olympic Park and the Saddledome. If you’re feeling brave you can take a step onto the glass floor and take a look down at the ground over 600ft below! We visited the Tower at sunset which gave us absolutely spectacular views with gorgeous colours as the sun set over the city skyline.
• Calgary Zoo – $29.95 per adult
  I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that Calgary Zoo is the best zoo either of us have ever been to. Right from the get go we had an absolutely phenomenal time! Calgary Zoo has been operating for over 90 years, earning their place as an internationally recognised, world-class animal care institution and is among the world’s top zoos and aquariums that have achieved accreditation standards from governing zoo operations such as World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA). It’s really clear to see how much care and attention goes into caring for the animals here, from the habitats to the staff/volunteers who can recognise each animal by name. My personal favourite was the penguin named Georgia, for obvious reasons, we had an instant connection. Calgary Zoo offers so much that it deserves it’s own blog post which will be linked here, soon.

Nightlife

We only really had two nights in Calgary so we made sure to make the most of it, as much as we could.

The first night in the city we visited a sports bar named “Home and Away“, the only thing was that despite the name, none of us realised it was a sports bar until we got there. The atmosphere was surely great for everyone there who was already drunk and were looking for a good time, but we were all starving and looking to catch up with some friends we hadn’t seen in a few months so it wasn’t exactly ideal. Nevertheless, we had fun shouting to each other across the tiny table, asking “did you even hear that?” as the other person politely smiles and nods, having no idea what they were asked. The food itself here was pretty standard “bar grub” we ordered sharing plates of nachos, chicken tenders and cheesy bread – the best thing on the menu was probably the fact they had Strongbow for us Brits!

The next place we visited was “The Shelter” a hidden speakeasy that seemed to be on an “if you know, you know” basis as it was almost impossible to find for four people who hadn’t been to Calgary before. We managed to get ourselves on the waitlist to be seated and headed over to wait inside only to find ourselves sitting at what seemed like the exile table that was in the hallway by the door, rather than the main bar itself, out of sheer British/Canadian politeness. Our lovely waitress did let us know when there was a table being bussed inside for us but after our first round we were ready to go. The drinks were, interesting, as to be expected in a place that prides itself on its individualism. We ordered a mixture of beer, cider and cocktails all as equally gross as each other. Only Jake enjoyed his drink, a teeny-tiny $20 cocktail named “the Silk Road” which was a concoction of gin, Pisco, batida de coco, lime, black tea, cardamom, and nutmeg. I told you they were unique…

Getting around

Calgary doesn’t have a huge downtown area so walking is relatively simple. The main city area is broken up into the clacks grid layout so as long as you know your lefts and rights, you should be fine!

• Calgary CTrain
  Through the heart of the city and reaching out into the local neighbourhoods, the Calgary CTrains are a convenient and relatively stress-free option to get you around Calgary. With only two routes, blue and red, the CTrain is easy to understand as long as you know where you’re going! Even better yet, they offer a free fare zone in the centre of the city which allows you to travel on either the red or blue line for free!
  
  We used the CTrain to get to Calgary Zoo which has its own CTrain station, leading directly to the ticket windows and entrance of the zoo! The stations are very easy to navigate and have ticket kiosk screens dotted around the platform. Before boarding the train (there are screens showing the ETA of the next train), head to one of these kiosks, select how many tickets you need, if it’s one way or an all day ticket, pay (contactless is accepted), and it’ll print out the tickets, simple! One way, from downtown Calgary to the Zoo, cost less than $10 for the two of us!

• TURO Car Share/Rental
  As an under 25 year old, car hire is expensive! I was hopelessly searching how we could get to Banff from Calgary and besides a bus, there weren’t many options. When I found Turo, I knew we had a solution!
  
  Turo is a car rental company that operates in a similar way to AirBnb, you hire someone’s actual car. You add your dates and city, scroll through the options and select the one you like the most. I found a 2021 Jeep Compass that was available for the day we needed it, including an early pick up and late drop off. You can message the car’s owner directly and discuss your planned journey with their car. The guy we hired from was really great, very friendly and helpful and had fully cleaned the vehicle before we arrived.
  
  The app offers you the choice to pay a flat fee to return the vehicle uncleaned or at any fuel level or you can fill back up to full before returning the car. We opted to fill it up ourselves and our whole journey only cost $35 in gas! Each car on the app also has a set number of miles/km per day and going over the limit costs a small amount per mile/km. The Jeep’s limit was 300km and when we got back to the drop off point we worked out we had done 299km! WIN!

Going to Banff… Duh.

Most likely the first thing that comes to mind when people think of Calgary is Banff National Park, so with that considered it’s probably seen as illegal to visit Calgary and NOT go to Banff.

As mentioned earlier we hired a car to get us to Banff, the drive itself was wonderful, we took Highway 1A rather than Highway 1 as we were told 1A was more scenic and only added an extra 20 minutes driving time. Driving from the city and slowly seeing the Canadian Rockies appearing on the horizon was such a sight to behold. I think I probably have over 100 photos taken from the car window!

When we finally entered Banff we had a little less time than anticipated (we may have missed an exit by a mile… or ten), so Jake and I hopped in a cab to take us to the Banff Gondola. We made it in good time and the cab only cost us around $15. We then journeyed up the side of Sulphur Mountain to the lookout and Sky Bistro, where we enjoyed a delicious lunch! There will be another, in-depth blog about that soon so keep your eyes peeled and be sure to subscribe so you never miss a post!

After lunch and after taking a look around the lookouts we figured, when we could no longer feel our fingers, it was probably time to head back down. We may have spent a little more time up there than we originally planned, but with those views who could blame us? When we got down to the Gondola station we took another cab back to the main street in Banff and then it was a mad dash to see everything before it closed! We visited on a Sunday so everything started to close just as we got back into town but that just gives us an excuse to go back!

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