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Calgary Trip Day 3: Friday
Aug. 24th, 2018 11:59 pmAnother early start. We made it downstairs for breakfast just in time. The older bear in the cowboy hat was there but this time he wasn't on the phone. We got the hotel shuttle with the turbaned driver again.
This time we took the 100 bus to the Blue Line C-train station and rode that downtown, then switched direction at City Hall station and went on one more stop to Victoria Park/Stampede station on the Red Line. We walked down a long skybridge (they call them +15 because they're 15 feet off the ground) to the Saddledome for a tour. While we waited, we could see through the door windows a few players from the Calgary Hitmen WHL team, changing shirts and doing conditioning drills with a coach.
Our guide was a tall young dude with reddish-brown hair named Sean. We were accompanied by a couple from Halifax and a father and three sons. After a brief chat in the concourse we ascended to the press boxes which are suspended from the ceiling along with the lighting catwalk; I was rather winded, and Sean said even he gets a little winded sometimes, but I recovered quickly. Next stop was the club level, followed by a tour of the locker rooms for visiting teams (including the Silvertips) and the Canadian national team, as well as the small TV studio (where a cute pocket bear photographer was just packing up his video camera). While we weren't allowed in the Flames' locker room, we did get to see the Hockey Night in Canada interview nook in the hallway outside as well as the home bench. They were just putting the finishing touches on the ice for the season. As we ascended from the ice level, a staffer asked how we thought the ice looked. We parted ways at the entrance where we started, and bought souvenirs from the Fan Attic before returning to the C-train station.
We rode one stop back to City Hall and had a quick lunch at Tim Horton's in the lobby of Bow Valley College. A disheveled scruffy dude was having a conversation with the security guards (one of whom was an apparently Muslim woman in a headscarf matching her uniform) as apparently he'd been there too long; a warning sign noted a time limit of 20 minutes. So we quickly finished our lunch and walked a few blocks to Studio Bell and the National Music Centre.
The building is rather striking in appearance, with a fifth-story skybridge connection between the studio building (itself incorporated into the old King Edward Hotel, which had been dismantled and reconstructed brick by brick) and the NMC. I suggested we take the same approach as we had in the Denver Museum of Art, and ascend to the fifth floor in the elevator and work our way down. There were several hands-on exhibits on the fourth floor including a singing booth where we tested our vocal ranges and were told we were basses (duh...), but there was no music for basses to sing along with. On the third floor we were treated to a demonstration of the Kimball Theatre Organ by a cute young dude named Ryan, which ended with him literally pulling out all the stops (and causing several participants to plug their ears because it was so loud). We also spent some time in the Made in Canada exhibit listening to recordings of Anne Murray and Neil Young.
As we left the NMC, we headed back through City Hall station to Olympic Park, where a DJ was playing steel-drum music from Trinidad while three separate steel-drum bands were setting up around the pool (in winter this becomes a skating rink). We spotted a dude wearing a Seahawks T-shirt with #24 for Marshawn Lynch.
From there we returned to the Stephen Ave Mall for dinner at Milestones restaurant. We noticed two tall and incredibly cute bearded dudes, one with a lady companion and the other with wife and adorable little daughter, seated nearby. I had a Caesar (Canada's Bloody Mary, with Clamato instead of regular tomato juice) followed by ginger ale and the prime rib, while Gary had ginger ale and a large and complex dinner salad. For dessert I had chocolate ganache torte and Gary the white chocolate cheesecake.
Next we walked the short distance down Centre Street to meet our evening van tour of Calgary. We were quite early and when we arrived there was a dude in a red turban whose car had lost its front bumper, negotiating with a Calgary cop that the car didn't need to be towed. They loaded up the bumper in the trunk and he was on his way. Our tour guide was Tony, a short, scruffy dude of around sixty by his own admission, but not looking it. Besides Gary and me, there were a couple from Queensland, Australia, another couple from Ireland, and a young dude who appeared Asian. We drove around for about two hours, stopping occasionally at overlooks and the Peace Bridge. At the second overlook, our last stop, I tried to climb over a guardrail, misjudged how close to the back of the rail I was, and tripped over the support. I was able to shift my feet to avoid a faceplant, but realized I wasn't OK when I saw that I was bleeding from where the steel support had gouged my shin.
Tony found the first-aid kit and the bearish Aussie, who happened to be a first-aid instructor, bandaged me up with some help from Gary.
At the end of the tour we caught the next 300 bus to the airport. When we got there, we stopped in the terminal to use the restroom and pick up supplies at Mac's convenience store, so we missed the shuttle that arrived at the same time as the bus. The next shuttle was the small van and there was a family of four needing to go, so despite being tired and cranky, we let them use it. The next shuttle was the larger van. Gary was stressed out over my mishap and didn't get a whole lot of sleep; I was relatively unperturbed as this wasn't my first time at the rodeo, so to speak.😁
This time we took the 100 bus to the Blue Line C-train station and rode that downtown, then switched direction at City Hall station and went on one more stop to Victoria Park/Stampede station on the Red Line. We walked down a long skybridge (they call them +15 because they're 15 feet off the ground) to the Saddledome for a tour. While we waited, we could see through the door windows a few players from the Calgary Hitmen WHL team, changing shirts and doing conditioning drills with a coach.
Our guide was a tall young dude with reddish-brown hair named Sean. We were accompanied by a couple from Halifax and a father and three sons. After a brief chat in the concourse we ascended to the press boxes which are suspended from the ceiling along with the lighting catwalk; I was rather winded, and Sean said even he gets a little winded sometimes, but I recovered quickly. Next stop was the club level, followed by a tour of the locker rooms for visiting teams (including the Silvertips) and the Canadian national team, as well as the small TV studio (where a cute pocket bear photographer was just packing up his video camera). While we weren't allowed in the Flames' locker room, we did get to see the Hockey Night in Canada interview nook in the hallway outside as well as the home bench. They were just putting the finishing touches on the ice for the season. As we ascended from the ice level, a staffer asked how we thought the ice looked. We parted ways at the entrance where we started, and bought souvenirs from the Fan Attic before returning to the C-train station.
We rode one stop back to City Hall and had a quick lunch at Tim Horton's in the lobby of Bow Valley College. A disheveled scruffy dude was having a conversation with the security guards (one of whom was an apparently Muslim woman in a headscarf matching her uniform) as apparently he'd been there too long; a warning sign noted a time limit of 20 minutes. So we quickly finished our lunch and walked a few blocks to Studio Bell and the National Music Centre.
The building is rather striking in appearance, with a fifth-story skybridge connection between the studio building (itself incorporated into the old King Edward Hotel, which had been dismantled and reconstructed brick by brick) and the NMC. I suggested we take the same approach as we had in the Denver Museum of Art, and ascend to the fifth floor in the elevator and work our way down. There were several hands-on exhibits on the fourth floor including a singing booth where we tested our vocal ranges and were told we were basses (duh...), but there was no music for basses to sing along with. On the third floor we were treated to a demonstration of the Kimball Theatre Organ by a cute young dude named Ryan, which ended with him literally pulling out all the stops (and causing several participants to plug their ears because it was so loud). We also spent some time in the Made in Canada exhibit listening to recordings of Anne Murray and Neil Young.
As we left the NMC, we headed back through City Hall station to Olympic Park, where a DJ was playing steel-drum music from Trinidad while three separate steel-drum bands were setting up around the pool (in winter this becomes a skating rink). We spotted a dude wearing a Seahawks T-shirt with #24 for Marshawn Lynch.
From there we returned to the Stephen Ave Mall for dinner at Milestones restaurant. We noticed two tall and incredibly cute bearded dudes, one with a lady companion and the other with wife and adorable little daughter, seated nearby. I had a Caesar (Canada's Bloody Mary, with Clamato instead of regular tomato juice) followed by ginger ale and the prime rib, while Gary had ginger ale and a large and complex dinner salad. For dessert I had chocolate ganache torte and Gary the white chocolate cheesecake.
Next we walked the short distance down Centre Street to meet our evening van tour of Calgary. We were quite early and when we arrived there was a dude in a red turban whose car had lost its front bumper, negotiating with a Calgary cop that the car didn't need to be towed. They loaded up the bumper in the trunk and he was on his way. Our tour guide was Tony, a short, scruffy dude of around sixty by his own admission, but not looking it. Besides Gary and me, there were a couple from Queensland, Australia, another couple from Ireland, and a young dude who appeared Asian. We drove around for about two hours, stopping occasionally at overlooks and the Peace Bridge. At the second overlook, our last stop, I tried to climb over a guardrail, misjudged how close to the back of the rail I was, and tripped over the support. I was able to shift my feet to avoid a faceplant, but realized I wasn't OK when I saw that I was bleeding from where the steel support had gouged my shin.
Tony found the first-aid kit and the bearish Aussie, who happened to be a first-aid instructor, bandaged me up with some help from Gary.
At the end of the tour we caught the next 300 bus to the airport. When we got there, we stopped in the terminal to use the restroom and pick up supplies at Mac's convenience store, so we missed the shuttle that arrived at the same time as the bus. The next shuttle was the small van and there was a family of four needing to go, so despite being tired and cranky, we let them use it. The next shuttle was the larger van. Gary was stressed out over my mishap and didn't get a whole lot of sleep; I was relatively unperturbed as this wasn't my first time at the rodeo, so to speak.😁