Calgary! (Part 2)

Since we'd gotten in so late the night before, we slept in Thursday morning until about 9:30 at which point we stumbled downstairs for our free continental breakfast. Sweet. I love continental breakfasts. After breakfast, we went back to our room and took two-ish hours (I know, terrible) getting ready. But, in our defense, we weren't in a hurry and also, we were watching the Home and Garden Channel.

Our first stop Thursday was the Calgary Tower. It's basically this super tall tower in the middle of Calgary. You pay your money and get to ride the elevator that seems to take forever all the way up to the Observation Deck at the top. And it's basically a circle so you get the 360 degree view. Although I'm not one for heights, it was cool to see all of Calgary. And really, as long as you're looking out, you're fine. The scary part is when you look down-- there's one side that has a ledge with a glass floor you can walk on. There were some kids on a field trip that loved it but to us it was scary! This is us laying on the glass floor (with our bottom halves safely on the non-glass floor).

After the Calgary Tower we wandered up and down Stephen Avenue. It's basically a bunch of shops and restaurants.

Annnnnd, after we were done wandering/eating, we went to the Glenbow Museum. For the most part it was your average museum BUT! they let us do a craft. And we got to take our craft home. I want to make more of the craft at home, too.

By the time we finished all of those things, Mitch was about done so we went back to the hotel. I'd planned on us going to a hockey game that night (what's Canada without a hockey game?!) but, Mitch wasn't super up for it so instead we went out to dinner.

Now, before I tell about the restaurant, I have to explain that Mitch loves looking up restaurants and reviews of restaurants and finding places that we've never been to that he wants to try. I try to support him looking but, sometimes he looks for a long time and, well, I get hungry and anxious for him to just choose something. That said, when Mitch was looking for a place for dinner I might have encouraged him to pick a place that had decently good reviews just because I was hungry and ready for him to pick something.

We ended up at a bar.

Really. Well, it was a sports bar/restaurant/dance hall. Probably in that order. That's not what we'd expected from the reviews and the website and everything. Once we were there we figured we might as well eat so we ordered our appetizer and meal. The appetizer took forever to come and was super lame. The food took fourteen times longer and was okay but nothing special. Meanwhile, the place is so loud we can't have a conversation so we're just watching the hockey/baseball/wrestling that's on the big tvs. Once we finally finished, it took the waitress like half an hour to run our card to pay for the meal. I was so done. I told Mitch not to tip her at all but, I think he ended up tipping her like $2.00. Which technically is less in U.S. dollars. Whatever.

Anyway, that was the rest of that day. Oh, except one other thing. The streets/maps in Calgary are awful. I'm not even kidding. We had like... four maps and they were all a little different. And then we'd write down directions from Google Maps and think we knew where we were going except, oh wait, the street signs (exit signs and what not) say completely different things than what they should. And there's no real freeway either. Just all these "trails." After having a heck of a time finding the "restaurant" Mitch wanted to go buy a GPS. And really, we almost did. We looked at them but didn't end up getting one. Instead we just went back to the hotel.

Friday started out the same. Woke up late, ate breakfast, took forever getting ready, etc. But THEN, we went to the ZOO! It was basically awesome except for the lazy lions. I love the zoo.

After the zoo we went to Harvey's. Harvey's is a hamburger place in Canada. I knew I'd been before and that my dad had made a big deal about us going last time we were in Canada but I'd basically forgotten why and if it was good. Turns out it's okay. They make your hamburger in front of you so, that's cool.

Once we were done with lunch we went over to Spruce Meadows for, get this, a horse competition! It was awesome. Neither of us had ever been to one of those. It was one of the jumping competitions and we got pretty into it. And now I want to learn how to jump horses.

Let's see... Friday night we went to one of the malls, I mean shopping centres, in Calgary. Had I known how much good stuff they'd have there I wouldn't have made Mitch walk around the zoo for so long. I would have saved his energy for the shopping.

After the mall we went to dinner. We'd driven past a place earlier in the day when we had taken a wrong turn somewhere and gotten semi-lost and somehow found it again to eat there. It was called Julio's Barrio and if you ever go to Calgary, you must eat there. It was really good. Hooray for wrong turns that turn out right.

(We're almost done.)

We drove all day Saturday to get back to Rexburg. (Including another wrong turn in Montana that cost us about 40 minutes.) We got there later than I'd hoped but Tracy had the-best-cookies-of-my-life and an amazing dinner almost ready so, the night ended well. (Oh except, we watched the new Indiana Jones with them and it was just weird so Tracy and I fell asleep.)

We went to church (Stake Conference) the next day with Tracy and Freddy and then drove home.

The End.

And you should go to Calgary too.