First [Big] Trip in Canada

First [Big] Trip in Canada

2014 marked the first time I spent traveling across Canada. In all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve only done a handful of trips to Vancouver and Montreal, usually en route to other places. Never had I taken an actual vacation solely in Canada, so it was my first time touring the country.

We started the first leg of our trip in Calgary. On Friday morning we boarded a flight from Toronto to Calgary and arrived shortly after 10:00 am. After grabbing our luggage, we bought day passes for the Calgary Transit, then hopped on a bus to take us to our downtown hotel.

Calgary was still very cold at the end of March. I think with windchill it felt like it was around -15°c to -20°c. Even though we couldn’t see very well through the dirty bus windows, it still looked like there was a thick layer of snow on the ground. After we arrived downtown, we quickly made our way to the hotel to drop off our bags. Then we hopped on another bus to take us to our first important spot of the day – lunch.

Lunch

I had looked up this Nepalese restaurant prior to going to Calgary. Even though it was really far out of the way, it was a good way to take advantage of our one day transit passes. The Nepalese restaurant was full when we got there, so we waited around 15 minutes before a table cleared up. It was really nice once we got seated and I was super excited to try their Himalayan buffet.

Nepalese food is actually very similar to Indian food, since they used a lot of curries and rice dishes. There was a lentil soup that I wasn’t very fond of, but otherwise the food was quite nice. Even the dessert buffet was very yummy. Lunch came to around $17 per person, which I thought was pretty decent for a buffet.

Lunch

After lunch we took a short walk to the nearest train station, then took the C Train towards Calgary Zoo. The C Train is Calgary’s version of the LRT and it is very convenient to use. If you travel within the downtown core the train is free to ride. I wish there was something like this in Toronto.

Once we arrived at the zoo, we grabbed our maps and made our way to all the exhibits. It was still pretty cold outside, so we were lucky there were a few pavilions which were indoors, like the African Savannah and the Rainforest. There’s even one section of the zoo which was created into a prehistoric park. It was kind of funny seeing dinosaurs on display at a zoo. It’s just too bad most of the animals in the Canadian Wild exhibit were hibernating. =P

Zoo Zoo Zoo

We were done touring the zoo after spending three hours inside. We caught the C Train back towards downtown Calgary and walked over to Chinatown. Calgary Chinatown is actually really small. We still had time to kill before dinner, so we ended up exploring the Cultural Centre and their version of the Dragon City Mall.

Chinatown chinatown02

Finally we made it inside Golden Inn Restaurant where we had Chinese food for dinner. I think the waiters were a little confused by us since we were talking in English to each other but ordering off the menu in Chinese. We had to ask them to give us both the 例湯 and the dessert. LOL. Dinner was pretty average, although I was surprised by the huge container of rice they gave us. In Toronto it’s common to see individual bowls of rice, but I guess Calgary is still pretty old school. Hehe

chinatown03

chinatown04

Since we gained time traveling from Toronto, it meant that we spent an additional two hours exploring Calgary. We were exhausted by the time we made it back to the hotel, but it was still a very good first day of vacation. More to come in the next day in Calgary!

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