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“A long time ago, according to one legend, the people were driving buffalo over these sandstone cliffs. A young brave wanted to watch the buffalo tumbling past. Standing under the shelter of a ledge, as if behind a waterfall, he watched the great beasts fall. The hunt was unusually good that day and as the bodies piled up, he became trapped between the animals and the cliffs. When his people came do the butchering, they found him with his skull crushed by the weight of the buffalo carcasses. Thus, they named this place “Head-Smashed-In”.

- The story behind the name of this place as described in the Interpretive Centre’s brochure.

Last Sunday, eight of us living in Calgary headed down to Fort MacLeod to visit a well known place where the natives used to stampede buffalo over cliffs in order to find the materials and food they needed to survive the winter. When we arrived in Fort MacLeod, it seemed pretty desolate with winds blowing dust through the streets and, at some point, I thought I might see a tumble weed roll around the streets. Our plan, to stop at the place best known for their buffalo burgers failing, since the restaurant didn’t open on Sundays. We ended up at A&W for lunch instead, the first time I chowed down at this particular fast food chain.

After lunch, we drove to the Interpretive Centre for Head Smashed In, a building constructed right into the hillside and just down from where people used to stampede the buffalo over the cliffs. The centre reconstructs the experience extremely well, with many different scenes reconstructed following a progressive time. A short fifteen minute video continues to rotate through, explaining and simulating the entire experience, with the typical disclaimer, “No animals were hurt in the making of this film.” Instead a computer generated image simulation of buffalo running over the edge finishing off the story for us.

It’s a great destination if you ever find yourself in Calgary, and if you’re ever so inclined, they even rent Tipis for groups of people to camp in to experience the prairie land way of life. Find the photos from the day trip here.

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I’m completing Gerrod’s challenge on a rather jetlagged brain. I don’t think it’s too bad either What do you think?

Came back to London last week
Enough for great weather to peak
  To drink some fine grain
  And get on a plane
For limerick in order to speak

I promise I’ll get around to writing up about my time there, though expect the technical stuff to appear on my work related blog.

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Arrived back in London today for a short visit before heading back to Calgary. Something is completely wrong with the picture below being the photo taken outside of my window, and the complete opposite (torrential rain, grey skies) what I left behind in Calgary.

This is not the world I remember! I’m not complaining though.

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This weekend, a bunch of us visiting Calgary from overseas including Megan, Chris and JJ, decided to head out to Drumheller (also known as Dinosaur Valley), located in the Badlands, an area north of the city holding vastly different terrain from the flat, generally brown prairie land that surrounds Calgary. We visited a number of attractions including a mini hike around Horseshoe Canyon, a visit to the world’s largest dinosaur statue, a visit to the Hoo Doos and the world class dinosaur museum, the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Surprisingly for a Sunday, the town of Drumheller seemed awfully quiet, with many of the stores shut around town despite the small number of tourists arriving constantly in vehicles. Being a dinosaur-themed town, plenty of the visitors had tiny kids in tow, although besides us, I noticed a large number of other non-kid toting groups of people.

The World’s Largest Dinosaur, of course, a T-Rex menaces about the local Aquaplex. Towering at about 88 feet, all the cars look miniscule in comparison. Of course, the sharp teeth also mean it’s pretty menacing if you can’t tell by the people running away from it in the picture to the left. The climb up gives a pretty nice, although limited view of the surrounding area, and almost feels like you’re about to be swallowed whole. We thought a slide down it’s throat to leave would have just made the entire experience.

On to the best dinosaur museum ever, The Royal Tyrrell Museum, a surprisingly modern museum holds a wealth of everything fossil and dinosaur related. Apparently the surrounding area is rich in fossils and keeps people busy uncovering new things all the time. It’s a fairly interactive museum and so well designed it managed to keep the four of us entertained at least for a couple of hours. It’s well worth the entry price, and apparently they even organise sleep overs for groups of kids that it almost makes me want to be back in school (almost!) I have to admit, even though my favourite dinosaur ended up as the massive skull, triceratops, I couldn’t but help but be amazed by the weird creatures they had including the Axolotls (picture from patrie71’s Flickr stream under Creative Commons).

We finished off our trip to Drumheller with a trip to the Hoo Doos, a series of interesting rock formations that look like a bunch of smurf huts. Apparently erosion and plenty of human intervention mean that the formation is unlikely to last for much longer, so I certainly appreciated being able to see them before their demise.

It was great to get out of Calgary and a road trip away from the city. Check out the pictures here.

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A couple of weekends ago, Eileen and KP graciously took Reshmi and myself up to Banff for afternoon tea at The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Looking very much like a castle nestled amongst the pine trees, the hotel has a weird mix of old and new to please everyone. Much like the Fairmont Lake Louise, shopping is very much upmarket (who buys artwork in the $1000s when they’re on holidays in the mountains?) with a number of restaurants and bars to suit all tastes.

Although they stuffed up our booking, with the result being the four of us crammed on a small table perched a little bit away from the amazing views provided through the window, the company and food helped make it an enjoyable experience.

On their website, their menu lists afternoon tea as:

Our waiter, much like many of the staff around town, was an Australian guy (from Melbourne) and served plenty of tea to make up for the tiny little table. Considering how busy the rest of the dining area was, he did a pretty good job of keeping up glasses of water full, our cups of tea hot and made it a pretty pleasing experience.

Although afternoon tea is relatively expensive at $32 and unlikely to be up to par to many of the London based ones, the dining atmosphere and (potential) views are worth going at least once. Book ahead, and given our experience, it’s definitely worth confirming the details of your booking closer to your visit.

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I’ve now flown Air Canada both domestically and overseas. For some reason, their domestic planes have an on demand entertainment system yet their international planes which actually really need them, lack them. Instead, their screens literally carpeted over with seat material instead. Bizarre? Yes, not to mention what a taunt.

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Wow! After only spending two days in Vancouver, I think it must be one of the most liveable cities I’ve been to so far. It beats Brisbane by having a real down town. It beats London by having the crowds and density without actually feeling like it. It beats Calgary by apparently only being 40 minutes from the nearest ski hill. It beats New York by actually being very walkable without feeling like you just completed a marathon. It also has an amazing number of suburban areas, each slightly different and unique. I would place bets that it also rivals the number of coffee stores selling reasonable coffee per capita than Melbourne.

There are plenty things that you may not like about it as well. Apparently it’s a very wet city. For me it rained Saturday morning although cleared up with spectacular results and fortunately making everything appear an intense green. Vancouver also has its fair share of dodgy areas, like on Hastings street that runs between the historic gas town and Vancouver’s vast Chinatown.

I’m not sure where all my time went spent between hanging around the awesome Granville Island Public Market, sitting in a number of cafes (including my, now favourite, Cafe Artigiano), walking around Stanley Park, eating superbly fresh seafood and indulging in the lively atmosphere along Robson. To be honest, I’m not sure if it really matters though with the great time I had there.

View the rest of the photos here.

Restaurants/cafes eaten at:

• Paul’s Place Omlettery
• The Sandbar Restaurant
• Mango’s
• Irish Heather
• Tsunami Sushi
• Cafe Artigiano

Other places I wanted to eat at:

• Vij’s for great Indian
• C Restaurant for seafood
• Tojo’s for atmosphere (and Japanese)
• Chill Winston for brunch

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