Beautiful Calgary

Before it became an old history, I do want to talk about my trip to Calgary, Canada recently(hmm… a while ago). When hubby announced that we are going to Calgary, I was thinking “What kind of place is that? I never heard of it.” Later I recalled one of our friend once mentioned about this city that if she get to choose, she will want to live in Calgary and she described it as a big city with high rise building but not as big as NYC and not as crowded but just a very nice place to live in. Hmm?

Now, we see it for ourselves and I have to say I fell in love with Calgary. It’s a very well-balanced city I should say, it feels like home, there are times that I felt like I’m walking in KL because they are so many oriental faces, most of them are from Hong Kong and in certain area, there are many Japanese too. Basically they have very healthy mix of many races, and you don’t see obvious separation. They are very well mixed in the society.
I’m a city person, I always love high rise building and especially enjoying looking up at the city light at night. But a big city as busy as NYC can also mean lower quality of life. Calgary has both the view, energy and the quality of life…

We stay in the downtown area so that we can conveniently walk to the US Consulate. This trip is for business purposes but we grab the opportunity to travel around a little bit. Bicycles are everywhere especially near the high rise buildings. Looks like most of them ride the bike to work.

Calgary is a very clean city, I heard they are the 5th cleanest city in the world, I was thinking to myself, this city is already super clean, who gets the first place? Maybe you have to consider the size of the population too relatively.

Most of the building have beautiful sitting area in the front or the back of their buildings.

We were wondering where are the people? We see many buildings, it cannot be that empty, and it’s lunch time.
And there you go, everyone is inside the buildings. They have what they call the elevated walkway, or the crosswalk between most of the building so they do not need to leave the building for lunch or dinner.
On the second floor of most buildings are restaurants, food court, malls, boutique…etc. So, in the winter they do not need to put on and take off their coat and walk in and out of the building like us, they can stay inside, keep warm and still walk through the whole downtown. Nice! Brilliant idea. Of course NYC can’t follow that, we are always scare of bomb, remember? You don’t want to connect the buildings, sigh.

They have many nice seating area everywhere inside the building, and not bench I’m talking about, they are nice beautiful sofas. Everything is very new and clean in this city. FYI, for privacy purpose, we’re not allowed to take picture inside the building, we didn’t know until the guard came to us, LOL!

I think they have more Starbucks than US. Well, we can’t help to stop and have a cup of our favorite Pumpkin Spice Latte!

We both think this is by far the vacation with most satisfying meals. Of course being a vegetarian is not always without challenge in terms of getting food. But in Calgary, we find it very easy to get fresh healthy vegetarian food and the people are very happy and willing to modify their recipe for us. Even this kind of fast food, I would not dare to try in NYC, but this one here is FRESH and delicious. We also found a very nice vegetarian restaurant with Hong Kong style food.

It’s so relax to stroll along the unique shops.

Chinook Centre is the largest shopping mall in Calgary. It is really HUGE and the food court/cafeteria is big, new, beautiful, and fresh. There’s soooo much things to see!! I skipped all the retailers that I can find in US, pick those that sounds most interesting, it’s still impossible to visit all of them. However, I was still lucky to grab some stuffs that I need with a very good deal.
By the way, we noticed Calgarian are majority good looking with lean body.

The Prince’s Island is 5 minute walking distance from our hotel. A very beautiful park. A stroll along the river and bridge complete our day.

From Calgary, we rent a car and drove to Banff National Park. The scenery along the way is indescribable…
And when we reach there, and as we walk and observe the beauty of the nature’s masterpiece, we both have the same feeling that we human are indeed so small…
The amazing part is we are so small yet we are so smart and powerful in creating all the technologies that enable us to reach places on this earth like never before, but we human can also be rather destructive in many ways…
Whatever it is, we’re totally taken away by the grand & magnificent view at the Canadian Rockies.

A view taken from the cable car.

There are more places that we really want to visit but with the limited time, we didn’t get to go, we will have to go back again one day. I wish I can bring my parents and family along in the future.
To view more pictures go to my Facebook.

Autumn Cleaning

Photo: Calgary, Canada (on the route to Banff National Park)

It’s time to clean up the spider webs that have spread across my blog. :) I don’t know why I’m just not so inspired to write lately…and was actually busy with quite a few things too. However, under the demand of my faithful reader – my dear husband :P , and hopefully some of you who did follow my blog, hehe sorry for kept you waiting. Well certainly not my brothers who claim to be too busy to read my blog. @-@
Anyway, it’s time to start writing, I think it’s also the time for a new look and style perhaps.