For the last couple weeks, I’ve suffered with this question – especially as the thermometer has dropped below 0°C. I’ve learned over the last month, that Calgary’s entertainment scene is geographically spread far and wide across the city. Calgary is a sizable city and if one doesn’t know where to begin, the choices can be over or underwhelming – depending on your perspective. However, there are particular areas that are good hot-spots for nightly meanderings from a Thursday to Sunday night – but Monday nights seem to suck donkey stones here.
So instead, I did the Stephen Avenue walk. This is an easy walk with access to the Olympic Plaza, several museums, and the Calgary Tower and will easily occupy a night, if you decide to have a bite upstairs the Calgary Tower, hang out with a sculpture or two and do some shopping.
From Monday to Fridays between 9-4, it is completedly busy, but any other time, it’s like people deliberately go out of their way to avoid this commercial pedestrian walk. Saturdays and Sundays, and especially anytime after 6pm, it’s like walking out into a ghost town.
Thankfully, there were tons of shops and restaurants to meander by, as well as my new favorite old men on the street having a conversation. Walking around downtown Calgary, there are many sculptures … some weird, some of them outstanding, some of them merely amusing.
Among the artistic cows, mechanical horses and metal trees, I found the “The Conversation” – which is an outdoor life-size bronze statue depicting two plump businessmen talking on the street, hence the name.
Calgary’s public sculptures are definitely worth a night walk to check out and will provide a brisk walk … here is a good link to finding the sculptures.
As for finding things to eat around these parts … rest assured, if you’re tired from walking around and being dazzled by lights, then pubs and grub are quite easy to find.