Canada Day 7 - Bonus Day (Sort of)

Downtown Calgary

We started off the day on hold with United again, this time for only 15 minutes or so, trying to get a new flight back to Chicago since the first one they booked us on flew out of Montana. When we agreed to drive there we didn’t know the rental car company would not allow us to drive across the border and not return the car to Canada. (We never stop learning.) The airline agents have all been very helpful, especially since what they have gone through the past few days can’t have been fun. Helping 1000’s of frustrated people get new flights due to Hurricane Erin, the Air Canada strike and bad weather in the Midwest. This time we got a direct flight back to Chicago. YEAH! On Friday. BOOO!


After booking our hotel for another night and extending our rental car for another day, we headed over to the airport to see if a face to face conversation would help. It did not. However, while at the airport Randy noticed some new options pop up on the United app. A Wednesday flight through Denver. Another call and another relatively short hold and the agent was able to book us on the Wednesday flights. A lot of stress and time that Randy spent hunting for flights and on hold, but a reasonable flight back given the weather and Air Canada mess.


How Randy has spent most of last night and this morning.
On hold with United, patiently searching
for a faster way home. 

At that point we still had half of the day left, so we had a quick lunch at A & W then, we headed over to Calgary’s Heritage Park. It's a large recreation of late 1800’s/early 1900’s Alberta and Calagry. Old shops including a hotel, saloon, post office, bakery, blacksmith and more. Workers in period costumes manned all the shops and provided a wealth of information about their jobs, life, and the time period in general. All very interesting. It was a pleasant way to fill an afternoon.


The root beer is still good but Heather was disappointed to learn they no longer sell hot dogs. 


Gasoline Alley - part of Heritage Park
filled with old cars and tools  



Randy turning the hand crank on a Model T engine. 

Oil pump recreation 




Mini Saskatoon berry tart from the bakery. 


Hudson Bay Trading Company recreation. 

We enjoyed dinner at the Railyard near our hotel. It was quite good, especially the cheesecake. 


 Beet salad, fancy grilled cheese with pesto and tomato jam and a pea soup with feta cheese and fresh herbs. 

Blueberry Lemon Cheesecake with Earl Grey sauce. 

Hopefully tomorrow's travel day goes well and we will make it home by early evening. Time for bed…we start early in the morning. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ireland Day 0 - Travel Day

Image
  A happy ending to a long night and day.  We are off on another adventure......   Our trip to Ireland started out much like our Alberta Canada trip ended.     Canceled flight and a mad scramble to find new flights. About 4pm Sunday we were notified our Aer Lingus flight direct to Dublin had been canceled for "Operational Reasons".    Not sure what that means other than no plane as we had scheduled.    They booked us on a flight the next night (Monday), but that would have caused us to miss a day of planned and paid for touring. Randy spent lots of time on hold and on calls, and lots more time surfing to check other options. His hard work led us to a flight through Heathrow to Dublin that still left Sunday night. The Heathrow flight went off without a hitch, however our connection to Dublin was delayed for over 3 hours, related to the cyber issues Europe has been experiencing the last couple of days. These affected flight systems, so people w...
Read more

Ireland 2025 - Follow Along If You Wish

Image
  Headed to Emerald Isle - Join Us! Hello Friends! We are headed back to Ireland so Heather is busy trying to get the blog page up and running. We first went to Ireland in 2023 with our travel buddies, Brad & Cindy. This time we will be traveling with our sisters Heidi (Heather's sister) and Rebecca (Randy's sister). We have all traveled together once before when we went to Spain in 2023. It worked out well, so when they both retired this year and thought a trip to Ireland might be fun, Randy put one together. This trip includes some things we enjoyed the first time, as well some places and things we didn't have time for...like vikings and dolmens. The map isn't exactly accurate, but Randy says it gives you the basic idea. Main places we plan to visit include: Dublin, Kilkenny/Waterford, Rock of Cashel/Killarney, Ring of Kerry/Killarney, Ring of Dingle, Cliffs of Moher, Galway, Inishmore, Donegal, Derry, Giant's Causeway, Ballycastle/Belfast, and Newgrange. Rand...
Read more

Day 1: Dublin

Image
On board the famine ship.  The weather was perfect today.     Sunny and no clouds.     We started out with breakfast at a local cafe.     No offense to Starbucks, but I don't recall my mochas looking quite like this.     (Taste was great also). We then headed off for a tour of Trinity College and the Book of Kells which is housed in a museum at Trinity. Trinity is the oldest college in Ireland, founded by Elizabeth I in 1592.    For approximately 325 years it was a Protestant only institution.   In the early 20th century that ban was lifted only to be replaced by the Catholics banning any of their members from attending. The Catholic ban was only lifted in the 1960s. The campus now has a student population that matches Irish society as a whole. Our tour was student led. Sadhbh (pronounced Sive and     rhymes with five)showed various buildings, most of which are 19th century and later.     No original 16th ce...
Read more