Wednesday, 18 January 2012

When Given the Choice

I roped some friends into joining me on the first series of adventures in Cow-town. I was a little nervous that taking a random bus would get us nowhere except an uninteresting suburban area of Calgary, after all Calgary is majority urban sprawl. While I had not guaranteed my friends a good time, I didn't want them to disown me forever. So I agreed to take the C-train downtown and then we could jump on a random bus there.

Turns out I know relatively nothing of what is in the downtown. I have passed it on the C-train and yes,  I thought that there wasn't too much to see: skyscrapers that look like any other skyscrapers.

But, in fact, the downtown has the Olympic Plaza complete with skating rink for the winter months (and I believe fountains in the summer), houses political activists, displays the Famous Five, is reminiscent of Vieux Quebec's Rue St. Jean with its Stephen Avenue to meander down, and of course contains Chinatown.

I felt like a mother as I shepherded my ducklings around downtown which was made harder by the fact that some of my ducklings were the high energy type who like to climb on everything. (Clearly I'm still one of those mothers who is still in denial as I didn't mention A.D.D.)

I'm also clearly not ready to be a mother, because I let them climb on the structure to the left, which is quite the unstable piece of art and strictly speaking, art isn't something you let your children climb all over.

What struck me about the downtown is the odd assortment of things that it contains. You can see an A&W by a classy restaurant (not that A&W isn't classy in my books). As you climb some stairs up by sketchy looking apartments, you find a rooftop with the piece of art seen in the image to the left. And also a scary children's daycare, all of which shares a street with glass-fronted shops.

At one point the group split, letting the children scamper off to find other things to climb (they turned up again unscathed, I promise) while a few of us decided to try Bubble Tea.  I'm still not entirely sure the pearls add anything to the delectable tea, but they give you something to chew on.

After all this wandering around and seeing the sights, we were of course hungry. So we sat down in a sushi place in Chinatown. Full of food, we headed home.

What constitutes an adventure? Is it standing as close to the edge as you can? Is it the amount of times you nearly die as you climb an unsafe structure? Or can it be measured in the amount that your stomach is upset after trying new foods?

When given the choice between sea urchin, octopus, and eel, I would recommend not choosing the urchin.

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