In August of 2026 we decided to spend three days in Calgary, followed by a couple more in Waterton Lakes National Park. We took our first flight ever on Flair Airlines with a non-stop flight to Calgary. Flair is a low cost airline known for its cheap fares, inconsistent achievement of flight schedules and for lots of add-on pricing.
This was the first time we ever took a vacation with only a personal item – no carry on, no checked luggage. Flair makes every passenger prove every item taken into the plane fits their size requirements and they tag each item as proof. It’s the only way they can protect their low costs. Our flight out was great. The 737 seats were fine and the plane left on time. I was very surprised to hear another passenger complain that Flair was too cheap to even provide free water during the flight. That’s why you fly with Flair. If you really want water, they sell it in bottles. You get exactly what you pay for with Flair and that’s more than fair.
We chose to take an Uber from the Airport to our accommodation at the Ramada downtown. I prefer Uber as I like the price commitment, the app integration, the ease of finding a ride and the ease of tipping after the trip. I don’t like that Uber has reduced driver commissions from around 80% to 50% though. From an investigation by More Perfect Union, I learned that the reason behind the change is related to insurance. Previously Uber provided inadequate insurance for passengers. To increase the liability insurance, they spun off their own insurance subsidiary and it takes a 30% cut for insurance. This allows Uber to say they only take 20% of the fare as their share. Personally, I just tip the drivers more now, as I still prefer the Uber experience over a traditional cab.
We had booked the Radisson Downtown Calgary, as we had such an enjoyable stay at the Radisson Airport Hotel in Zurich, but this wasn’t a similar experience. First off, the downtown area around Stephen Ave Walk is a great pedestrian area featuring great restaurant choices, but it’s also frequented by many drug addicts wandering about. Most locals don’t seem to give much notice to this issue. However, when you enter buildings for access to the +15 Sky Walk connections and the shops inside, you will always find security guards who are there to control access. The situation is quite unfortunate and definitely off-putting for some tourists.
Our stay at the Radisson Downtown Calgary also got off to the wrong start when they claimed that booking.com hadn’t forwarded our reservation properly. This response was suspect, as they were able to look up the original reservation. The Radisson then struggled to find us a vacant room. Eventually they gave us a very large suite at no extra cost, but the murphy bed and the failing climate control caused us to request another room.
With a different person at the desk by then, we got a much nicer room, but the thermostat in that room also wouldn’t work. A floor space heater was provided and we were happy with the room for the rest of our stay.
Our first full day of our Three Days in Calgary started off with a visit to cafe Artigiano where we enjoyed oak milk lattes and custom fresh-made egg, cheese and ham croissants. These were expensively delicious. After breakfast, we strolled the area to the south for murals. In addition to several murals on buildings, we enjoyed the many murals at High Park, which is a public area on the top of a very large public parking lot. The venue includes basketball courts, flower gardens and lots of murals. We were the only ones at High Park that cloudy, chilly morning.
Next we walked back north to the LRT line and rode it to the downtown Calgary Public Library. The section of the LRT through the downtown is free to all riders and since the Red and Blue lines both use this section, it is super easy to move about quickly.
The Calgary Public Library has become a destination for tourists and for local children. The sweeping wooden architectural design draws in tourists. The indoor playground, toys and art workshops draw in local families. The library was a great place to visit, though I didn’t see many people reading.
From the Public Library, we continued by walking through Confluence Park to Fort Calgary. The museum here is small, reasonably priced and enjoyable. The displays are well thought out and interesting. The pictures of First Nations groups from more than 100 years ago provided insight into the plight of the original inhabitants of the prairies.
One thing that struck me was the old fashioned European hats that the early First Nations groups adopted. This reminded me of some of the unusual hats that native Quechuans wear now in Peru. After our visit to Fort Calgary, we wanted to walk the Bow River Pathway to Prince’s Island but time was running short. So, we caught an Uber to the Chinese Cultural Centre.
The Chinese Cultural Centre was the highlight of our first full day in Calgary. The entry fee of $5 was a bargain. The hallway display, with large & easy to understand printing that detailed the historical oppression of Chinese people in Canada, was sobering. After making an enormous contribution to the creation of Canada by working on the railway through the Rockies, the Chinese faced a head tax and efforts to remove them from being a part of Canadian society.
The Chinese Cultural Centre has a number of magnificent artifacts too. The Terracotta Warrior replicas were made by China for Expo 86 and subsequently donated to the Chinese Cultural Centre. The gigantic picture of two tigers has an amazing 3-D quality, because it is made entirely of feathers. We also found an ivory carving of two couples that was beautiful. The carving was made long before carvings in real ivory became illegal.
From the Chinese Cultural Centre, we strolled the Bow River Pathway and crossed over the foot bridge to Prince’s Island. We stopped in at the River Cafe on the island. This restaurant is quite interesting, as it specializes in ingredients from across Canada. Unfortunately, we found it a bit noisy with a music festival underway immediately adjacent to their premises. This looked like a great place to enjoy lunch or dinner though.
After Prince’s Island, we continued along to Bow River Pathway to the Peace Bridge, which looks like one of those prank finger pinchers from a bygone era. Then we walked to the nearest LRT station and rode the rails back to our downtown hotel.
Since we had opted not to have dinner at the River Cafe, we needed a new option for dinner. We chose the Cactus Club on the Stephen Avenue Walk and what a great choice this turned out to be! We had mocktails and shared their lovely parker house rolls, their amazing ribs appetizer and the most delicious dijon-soy salmon dinner.
The Cactus Club dinner and the service impressed us so much that we came back the next night and had the exact same meal over again. The experience was just as good the second time around. What a great find!
You’d think we would have been exhausted after a long day of touring downtown Calgary, but I was ready for an after dinner walk. So, we took an Uber to Chinatown where we joined the Bow River Pathway again. This time we walked east along the section we’d missed. A rain storm was chasing us from the west as we walked, but it didn’t catch us during our stroll. When we reached Confluence Park, we crossed back into the downtown and caught the free LRT back to our hotel. What a lovely way to end a special day.
For our second full day in Calgary, we headed out on the LRT Red Line from Downtown to Heritage Station. Then we transferred to the 402 bus, which took us directly to Heritage Park. The weather had turned from cool and cloudy to sunny and comfortable, so we were in for a great time at Heritage Park.
We started out or visit by heading straight to the SS Moyie for the first paddle boat cruise of the day on the Glenmore Reservoir. Then we took a steam train ride halfway around the park to the Settlement, where Drew’s Saloon gives you an indication of what makes Heritage Park fun. The saloon doesn’t have any refrigeration. Instead you can order a cold drink and they pull your beverage out from a tub of ice, just like in the good old days.
We then made our way back to the Village Center where you can find other fun stores. Our favorites were the bakery and the candy store with its old fashioned treats. The experience is like heading back to the time of Little House on the Prairie and while you are enjoying the old shops, the steam train blows its whistle and passes through the village.
My favorite building was the grain elevator at the edge of the Village Center. Grain elevators have disappeared from the prairies, so it was fun to go inside one. An attendant was there to give a complete explanation of how a grain elevator works. I was surprised how little I actually knew about their inner workings and how special these devices once were for prairie farmers.
The last area we visited was Gasoline Alley and we spent more time than I would have expected here. The old vehicles and gas pumps were numerous and immaculate. We wandered slowly through both floors and marvelled at all the different shapes and long forgotten model names from the days when motor vehicles were first available on the market. This was a remarkable journey back in time.
Once we’d given our full attention to Heritage Park, it was time to move on and we decided to squeeze in the Calgary Zoo too. Local transportation would have taken too long, so we made our way to the zoo by Uber. When we got there, it became apparent that we should have visited the day before when it was cloudy, rainy and not the weekend. With the sun out on a Saturday afternoon, the zoo was packed with visitors, making it difficult to work your way through the exhibits.
Nevertheless the Calgary Zoo was fabulous. Among our favourite exhibits were the Red Panda sleeping in a tree, the healthiest Polar Bear I’ve ever seen and the penguins. The chilly air in the Penguin enclosure was refreshing and the penguins get so close while they are still in the water that staff are there to warn you not to touch them.
Another favourite for me was Dinny the Dinosaur. Dinny was created in 1935 and refurbished in 2021, but Dinny had to stay where he was originally built instead of joining the other newer dinosaur sculptures in the Prehistoric Park. The reason Dinny had to stay is that this dinosaur is 34 feet tall, 107 feet long and weighs 120 tons. You can find Dinny on Dinny’s Grove near Exploration Asia.
On day 3 in Calgary we rented a vehicle for a day trip to Drumheller and a subsequent visit to Waterton Lakes National Park. Our VW Tiguan was aggravating to say the least. Although it had a comfortable ride and reasonable safety technology, the other operational features were terrible. I’ve never had trouble with a rental car, but the Tiguan was a constant challenge.
Some of the challenges were: audio was blocked when Car Play navigation was running, the transmission “wand” had a Park button hidden on the end of it, tire pressure warnings kept going on and off, door handle for auto lock/open never consistently responded, never figured out how to turn the radio off so we had to turn the volume to zero, never figured out how to advance the cruise speed slightly as it always took off, very difficult to change the air conditioning fan speed.
At red lights the Tiguan would turn off with a shudder and then 10 seconds later it would start again and stay on for the rest of the light. When I left the VW Tiguan behind in Calgary and returned to my trusty 2003 Mazda Tribute, it was pure luxury to have a vehicle that is so easy to operate without taking your eyes off the road.
Despite the annoyances of the VW Tiguan, it did get us to Drumheller. This was another sunny day and I enjoyed the drive out onto the prairies. Along the way, we stopped at Horseshoe Canyon for an interesting view of the badlands. In Drumheller we stopped for the obligatory picture of their giant dinosaur sculpture and then took the short trip out of town to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
We hadn’t seen much traffic all day, so we were surprised to find the Royal Tyrrell Museum main parking lot was full and the overflow parking lot had only a few spots left. The museum is amazing and greatly exceeded our expectations. The giant stone fossils and the articulated fossil skeletons were impressive. Even the dinosaur sculptures to scale were impressive. Although the museum was crowded, it wasn’t difficult to see all the displays and they just kept coming and coming. I had no idea the Royal Tyrell Museum would be that extensive.
At one point we came across an employee on the visitor pathway who was working with power tools to extricate a dinosaur fossil from rocks that were encasing it. He indicated to the crowd that he had been working on this rock mass for 3 weeks, having already removed bones from 3 other dinosaurs. He was now revealing the 4th and last dinosaur from the entangled mass of fossil bone. Amazing!
After our visit to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, we headed east out of Drumheller for about 15 minutes to the Hoodoos. The Hoodoos were smaller than I expected and the large number of tourists wandering among them as they snapped pictures made the experience somewhat undesirable. Still, the Hoodoos are pretty cool and I’m glad we stopped to see them. We enjoyed our day trip to Drumheller and highly recommend it.
After our Three Days in Calgary, we moved on to spend Two Days in Waterton Lakes National Park in our Troublesome Tiguan.
