Go on a Walking Tour

Go on a Walking Tour of Downtown Calgary
September 21, 2013

In 2004 my wonderful friend, Nicole (see also: Wine Tasting), and I were in New York City.  We went on a free walking tour that lasted 17 hours but would have been longer if it hadn't been rained out by a hurricane.  I love that every part of that sentence is completely true! 

That trip had been my 4th time to New York.  While you certainly can't see everything in 3 visits, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the sites, until this tour.  It completely opened my eyes to so many incredible things in NYC.  That city is amazing.  It's time for another trip, I think... k, hubby?

In any case, I discovered that there is a company in Calgary that offers a walking tour.  While it wasn't free, 17 hours, or rained out, it was certainly worth it.

Nicole came with me on this tour as well, which was really nice!  We started our tour in front of city hall, which is pretty cool in itself.  I love that there is a modern building and an original building that make up city hall!

We walked along Stephen Ave, noticing things that I'd never seen before, such as the original office of the founder of the Calgary Stampede and the statue of the Famous Five (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famous_Five_%28Canada%29).

We went up the street and checked out the Family of Man statues.  This is a statue that I've seen so many times, but have never been up close to.

My camera has that feature that tries to recognize faces in the preview mode and it was doing that to a very specific part of the statues, which made me laugh! 

We kept going up the street and came to some really cool displays outside of the passport office and talked about travelers not knowing where Calgary is on the map.

Then over to the river where we discussed the floods.  The other two people on our tour lived in Calgary, but had recently moved here, so they were pretty interested in the flood stories.  They had just missed all of the crazyness.

We walked through the Chinese Cultural Centre.  There was a wedding going on that night, so they had the ballroom set up beautifully!  The roof of the cultural centre was incredible!

The guides opted to take us to Livingston Place (I think that's where this was, but please correct me if I'm wrong) instead of the Devonian Gardens, because most people don't know about the beautiful green space on the second floor.  I sure didn't.  It was so tranquil and beautiful! 

They showed us a few other great spaces and then we ended off at the Bow.  We stood inside of the wire head art (really cool, but doesn't make much sense without a picture!) and then went inside.  I was surprised to find that the floors of the building don't actually
extend to the outer wall, so if you stand at the bottom right by the wall, you can see all the way up to the top floor!

This is where the tour ended.  It was a great experience and I learned a lot from our guides, who were obviously very passionate about the city and the history. 

It was a great day with Nicole and hopefully only walking tour number two of many!