Calgary
Wednesday: Is the heater on?
30.01.2008 - 30.01.2008
-23 °C
We landed in Calgary pretty much on time; the view on the descent into the airport was very cool. Having never been on a snow holiday before, it was strange to see a blanket of white covering everything. Calgary looks pretty flat from the air; it's a good 150km from Banff, and the Rockies. Interestingly, dad commented after on the fact that there was actually not all that much snow, depth wise, on the ground. The week before we arrived, though, it was -43 degrees celcius, before wind chill, on some days! Definitely too cold to snow, so that probably explained it.
When we arrived, it was -23, and my breath caught in my throat when I left through the arrivals double doors. The coach wasn't far away, though, which was handy.
Our first image of Calgary, taken through the window of the bus.
One of the two mile long trains which were everywhere. They're part of the Canadian Pacific railway group, and are just incredibly long. Quite often there are four power trains, two at the front and two in the middle. Lots of the carriages are double decked too, and in the middle of the night you sometimes hear their horns - caribou, elk and lots of other animals wonder on the tracks.
This ski jump was really interesting. Just outside Calgary, it formed part of a much larger complex; other jumps, a superpipe, moguls fields, slalom, etc., all part of the "Calgary Olympic Park". Probably due to the lack of real snow I mentioned earlier, snow blowers were on full blast all over the place. Mum and dad mentioned an interesting story about Eddie the Eagle and his performances at Calgary - you can read about Eddie the Eagle here.
The scenery on the way into Banff was just amazing; I'll not post pictures here as the ones I took from the bus weren't great, and there are much better pictures that I'll save for later posts.
Posted by bornfishy 07.02.2008 17:03 Archived in Canada Tagged transportation
