a peek inside the fishbowl

In my previous post about our first day in Calgary I wrote a bit about our great accommodations (here’s a panoramic view from our balcony I forgot to upload by the way!) and a very cool sushi restaurant. We decided to spend our second day at the Calgary Zoo. We got up, got dressed, had a quick breakfast, and grabbed some picnic lunch-type items from the Sunterra market on the ground floor of our condo to bring with us.

According to our GPS, the Calgary Zoo was only seven minutes away by car but somehow we made a wrong turn and ended up at the west side parking lot at the zoo. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It’s a small lot with very easy access to that side of the zoo. (Note: we saved five bucks on admission because we bought tickets online ahead of time.)

I won’t go into detail about the entire zoo experience (I don’t want this to turn into a longer version of Uncle Marvin’s Holiday Slideshow), but I will say that we were impressed by what we saw and would definitely recommend paying a visit if you happen to be in Calgary. It’s clean, well-planned, friendly, and there’s a lot to see whether you’re 5 or 105.

The panda exhibition is a special draw this year. We obtained timed tickets ahead of time but didn’t actually need them. We strolled in via the “general” queue and were able to watch them sleeping and lying around… the pandas are not busy animals.

One of my personal favourites at the Calgary Zoo was the lemur exhibit. It’s really well done. You can wander into their enclosure (it’s quite a large area) and see a variety of different lemur species doing what lemurs do: climb, stroll, eat, poop. The visit was semi-guided, with zoo staffers making sure the human visitors were well behaved and stand still during a “lemur crossing” (i.e. a lemur walks right in front of you). They also explained lemur behaviour, habitat info, and other fun lemur facts. I could have stayed here all day.

When we arrived, the lemurs were all rather sleepy and far from the main viewing area (I figured they were in cahoots with the pandas) but they woke up and started walking and climbing around, and also (much to the delight of the younger members of the audience) defecating from the high wire.

I also really enjoyed the meerkats.  I am greatly amused by these comical little creatures. There’s just so full of personality. You can practically see the speech bubble over this guy’s little head:

If you follow me on Instagram you’ve probably already seen the little video I shot of a meerkat on top of a sleepy meerkat. (I also uploaded it to YouTube if you’d like to view it there.)

The weather was absolutely perfect for a zoo visit, about 20C, with interludes of sun here and there and a very small smattering of rain.

Another highlight: the botanical gardens! This part of the zoo was absolutely stunning. Don’t skip it. There are surprises at every turn:

Of course, this is only a small fraction of all the creatures – great and small – we saw that day.

It was a great outing and I’m glad we went.

For dinner, the youngest did some research and found a good candidate for a nice night out: the Bank and Baron. It’s a gorgeous restaurant in an old bank on Stephen Avenue, which is reminiscent of Sparks Street here in Ottawa. (Imagine heritage buildings/shops/restaurants linked by a street that is closed to vehicles). Gorgeous spot, in a great location, plus a good lookin’ menu, I’m in! We were seated and were just getting our bearings when the waiter approached our table. He turned to our daughters: “So, I guess both of you have ID?” I wasn’t even sure why he was asking. We hadn’t even ordered anything. The eldest said yes, the youngest smiled and said she was underage. That’s when he explained the hitherto unknown (to me) rule about Calgary pubs. Apparently, people who are under the legal drinking age can’t eat (EAT) in a pub. I was very confused because this place looked very much like a restaurant. Other than a big bar in the middle of the room, it was mostly chairs and tables. We complained, but we knew the servers don’t make the rules here, so we mostly just grumbled to ourselves.

Sorry you are losing so many tourism dollars, Alberta!

We left, feeling dejected, hungry, and tired. We didn’t know where to go from this point so we ended up at Earl’s, a contemporary diner down the road. It was nice enough. I ordered tacos, they were decent. I will say that their garlic fries are pretty good. We walked home with full tummies and once again, fell into bed. Tomorrow we’d be waking up early for a trip out to Drumheller.

• Posting Instagram Sponsored Content Is the New Summer Job, theatlantic.com
• When Fear of Strangers Is Fatal, nytimes.com
• How Restaurants Can End the Soft Sexism of ‘Ladies First’ Service, eater.com
• Our favourite lunch hacks and tips, terra20.com
• Not the enemy of the people, medium.com/@stacybrick
• Everybody hurts sometimes. Everybody cries, thestar.com
• Melania Trump Could Be Our Greatest First Lady, nytimes.com

On the nightstand: Reluctant Genius

As I mentioned in my previous post, when Mark and I got married twenty years ago we honeymooned in Calgary, Banff, Lake Louise, and Jasper. This summer we decided to recreate the experience this summer and bring the kids. I am so glad we did.

Our first day in Calgary was a very long one because it started in Ottawa around 3 a.m. The alarm was set for 5 a.m. but I woke up every hour on the hour between midnight and three wondering if it was time to get up yet. I gave up just after 3 a.m and threw in the towel at 3:45 a.m.

Everyone was fully packed and ready to go the night before, so getting to the airport was painless. We flew direct to Calgary via Westjet, picked up our car rental (a fully loaded Jeep Cherokee) and found our way to our Airbnb. THIS is the place we stayed in Calgary. I should mention that this was the very first time we’d booked an Airbnb and I can’t believe it’s taken us this long. It’s a two bedroom, two bathroom condo that’s right downtown across the street from the Sadddledome. Sparkling clean. On the 23rd floor. With a balcony. It was fabulous.

Getting into the condo could have been confusing (with a lockbox, key fob, private parking info, etc.) but the owners provided extremely detailed instructions in a 13MB PDF, complete with photos (“this is what the garage door looks like”). Thanks to their guidance it was pretty much smooth sailing.

One of the best things about this condo was the market on the ground floor. Sunterra is akin to Whole Foods, but on a smaller scale. Plus, there’s a licensed (!) dining area on the third floor with sandwiches, burgers, salads, pizza… that kind of thing. After lunch we did a small shop for breakfast items and then went on a walkabout… which turned out to be a mistake. My body had clearly had enough and I started to feel woozy as we walked further and further away from our home away from home. We came back, and I had a two-hour nap, and we drove to Calgary’s Chinatown for dinner.

Here’s where I should mention that we were rather ill-prepared because we didn’t research WHERE we should go for dinner, but a quick look online revealed a sushi restaurant that seemed really interesting. This turned out to be the highlight of our day. It was a little bit tricky to find Point Sushi, mostly because it seemed like the address was leading us to a church, but we persevered and went up some steps and through a big foyer and there it was: a bright modern restaurant with rows of booths, almost like a diner. Connecting the booths were small two-level “tracks.”

There is where sushi gets fun (usually you don’t use the words FUN and SUSHI in the same sentence). You order your food on a touchscreen and it comes right to your table on a miniature bullet train. Drinks and everything! ON A TRAIN. It’s quite novel. The portions are intentionally small (say, four pieces of sushi as opposed to eight in one serving), but it’s priced accordingly. Protip: if you ever find yourself at Point Sushi, I recommend ordering one item at a time so the train comes more often.

There was a young family at the booth next to ours and the boys were beside themselves with excitement. They could not contain their joy, which is certainly understandable because I was having a tough time keeping a lid on it as well. ;)

Here’s a little taste of what it looked like:

I really enjoyed the gimmick of the sushi train but more importantly, the food was good. I also appreciated the multiple smaller portions (and ordering when we felt like it) instead of being faced with our usual giant order all at once.

The whole system is very efficient. Plates and chopsticks are within easy reach on a shelf over the tracks. A hot water tap right at the table (!!) ensured that my green tea was always topped up and hot. Ordering on the touch screen was so simple, and we could see our orders, past and future, thus preventing questions such as: “What roll was that again?” and “What else is coming?” and to keep tabs on our tab. AND, if anyone reading this is interested in this kind of thing, the washrooms at Point Sushi have fancy Japanese bidets with remote controls and ALL KINDS of features. ‘Nuff said.

After dinner we were hoping to explore Calgary a bit more, but a rain shower sent us back to our car. We drove around downtown and got stuck in traffic but I didn’t mind. There was nowhere to go and we were having fun anyway. Back at our condo we watched a movie, ate popcorn, and fell into our beds.