Alberta , Canada Road Trip: Day 2 (Calgary)

On Day 2, we got up a bit early and decided this would be the only time we have to explore Calgary as we would be driving to Banff and Canmore today to start this road trip. Before we turned in last night, we agreed with our travel companions that we would not join them for breakfast at the hotel's bistro and instead we'd take this time to go around; they have arrived early yesterday and did their own driving around and have told us that Calgary is pretty small so we can easily see what we came here to see before we meet up with them to start the road trip.

In all honesty, all I want to see is the Peace Bridge because it looks so Instagrammable. Yeah, what a shallow reason, eh?

But today being a Sunday, we thought it best to pay a visit to church first just to say a little thanksgiving prayer and a whole lot of travel mercy prayers for all travelers. The internet search I did back home resulted in the Cathedral Church of the Redeemer, which was not too far from the hotel.

No service going when we stopped by.

Across the street is this really neat mural, I couldn't take my eyes off it.

Somehow we were able to find the Peace Bridge easily and parking across the street was available too. It was too early on a Sunday and we had the Bridge all to ourselves for the most part. The Peace Bridge is a footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists across the Bow River. Construction started in 2010 and opened in 2012.

We returned to the hotel to meet up with our friends, but then we forgot we have not had any breakfast yet. Thankfully, about 3 doors down from the hotel is a cafe so we got something to go - breakfast will have to wait until we're on the move. And just before we left, our friends asked if we remembered to bring hoodies/scarves and gloves. Since we didn't bring any gloves (we don't have that in our closet being Californians, I guess) we thought it's best to get that here in Calgary than Banff, where we would be paying more given that it would be resort/tourist pricing. However, we found that not all stores are open on Sunday here. And this one that's open actually just changed their merchandize to accommodate summer items.

Now, there is still one store our friends thought of that might have it, a sporting goods store that looks like our REI. And it's on the way out of Calgary too so we didn't have to use more time in going in and out of the store. Going to the store, I found so many things to photograph. They do have a lot of murals.

And the road trip begins. Calgary to our destination for the day, Canmore where we will stay 2 nights, is an 1 1/2 hours drive.