Three days in Calgary: a cattle town that struck oil and never took the hat off

Two nights where the prairie meets the foothills: the tower and the island on the first evening, a living history village and the oldest neighbourhood on the second day, and the Olympic hill on the way west.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Calgary
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Calgary began in 1875 as a mounted police fort at the meeting of two rivers, put there to keep American whisky traders out of the Canadian west before the settlers arrived. The railway came in 1883, cattle followed, oil arrived in the 1940s and never left, and the city has been rebuilding itself in glass every decade since. Almost nothing here is more than a century old and the place is entirely unbothered by that.

What it has instead is location and money. The Rockies begin an hour west, which is why most people pass through, and the oil industry has paid for a library, a music centre and an arts district that a city of this size would not otherwise have. In July the whole thing puts on a Stetson for ten days and the Stampede takes over, which is either the best week of the year or a very good week to be elsewhere.

Two nights is right if the mountains are the real destination. Give it a third day if you want the Olympic hill, the zoo's dinosaurs or a run out to the badlands, and eat well while you are here: this is a much better restaurant town than its reputation.

Highlights

  • A 1968 observation tower with a glass floor, and the Rockies on the horizon from the top of it
  • A library over a working railway line, wrapped in a wooden arch you walk through to get in
  • Sixty-six acres of relocated prairie town, staffed in period and running a real steam train
  • The point where two rivers meet, and where the mounted police put the fort the city grew around
  • Ski jumps and a bobsleigh track from the 1988 Winter Olympics, on a hill above the highway west

Where to stay

Calgary, two nights

Downtown is a compact grid of towers on the south bank of the Bow, with an island park in the river on one side, the East Village and the confluence to the east, and Inglewood, the original townsite, just beyond that.

Stay downtown, in Beltline just south of it, or in the East Village. All three put you on the free stretch of the CTrain and within twenty minutes on foot of everything in this trip except the last morning.

Day by day

Day 1 in Calgary

The tower, the library and the island

Get high first. The Calgary Tower went up in 1968, when it was the tallest structure in the city and had a clear view over open prairie, and although the office towers have long since gone past it the observation deck still gives you the whole grid, the Bow River and, on a clear day, the Rockies standing up on the western horizon a hundred kilometres away. There is a glass floor. Late afternoon is the time to go.

Ten minutes east is the Central Library, which opened in 2018 and is the piece of architecture Calgary is proudest of, for good reason. It is built over a working light rail line that curves underneath it, wrapped in a hexagonal patterned shell, and the entrance is a great wooden arch that frames the train tunnel. Go in even if you never read anything. The atrium is worth twenty minutes.

Then down to the water. Prince's Island sits in the Bow at the north edge of downtown, joined by footbridges, and the path around it is the pleasantest half hour in the city centre. There is a restaurant on the island that has been the best table in Calgary for a long time and cooks almost entirely from western Canada.

Cross the red Peace Bridge on the way back if the light is going. It is a Calatrava tube and it photographs absurdly well.

  1. 16:00

    Calgary Tower

    Architecture

    Open until late in summer. Forty-five minutes, and time it for the hour before sunset when the mountains show up best.

  2. 17:15

    Calgary Central Library

    Culture

    Free, open daily, ten minutes east on foot or two stops on the free CTrain. Go up to the top floor and look back down the atrium.

  3. 18:15

    Prince's Island Park

    Nature

    Footbridge from Eau Claire. A flat loop of about twenty minutes, with the river on both sides and the towers behind.

  4. 19:15

    River Café

    Other

    On the island itself, wood-fired, local to the point of dogma, and worth booking well ahead. The best dinner in the city.

With more time: The Devonian Gardens are a full acre of indoor park on the fourth floor of a downtown shopping centre, which is a very Calgary solution to January and is free.

Day 2 in Calgary

A prairie town rebuilt, then the oldest street in the city

Heritage Park takes the morning and is much better than the phrase living history village suggests. Sixty-six acres on the edge of a reservoir hold an assembled prairie settlement: a fur trade fort, a railway town with a working steam locomotive, a 1930s main street, a paddle steamer on the water, and staff in period who will talk to you at length about the grain trade if you let them. Go early, walk the town rather than the midway, and give it three hours.

In the afternoon come back into town to the Confluence, the point where the Elbow River joins the Bow, which is where the mounted police built Fort Calgary in 1875 and therefore where the city starts. The site has been reworked as an interpretive centre with the Blackfoot, Tsuut'ina and Stoney Nakoda history of the ground given proper weight alongside the police one.

Walk five minutes across the bridge into Inglewood, the original downtown and now a strip of nineteenth century brick full of record shops, antique dealers, breweries and restaurants. It is the most likeable street in Calgary.

Eat at the old house on the riverbank by the fort, which has been moved twice, was once a boarding house, and is now the best lunch or dinner on this side of town.

  1. 09:30

    Heritage Park

    Historic

    Open daily in summer, weekends only in the shoulder season, closed most of the winter. Take the train around the site once before walking it.

  2. 13:30

    The Confluence

    Culture

    Twenty minutes back into town. Ninety minutes covers the exhibits and the walk out to the point where the rivers meet.

  3. 15:15

    Deane House

    Other

    A 1906 house beside the fort site, and the kitchen makes proper use of prairie ingredients. Lunch is easier to get into than dinner.

  4. 17:00

    Inglewood

    Landmark

    Cross the bridge and walk 9th Avenue east. Two or three blocks of shops and breweries, and an hour disappears in them.

With more time: Lougheed House is a sandstone mansion from 1891 in the Beltline, with the garden restored and a good tea room, and it is the last of the big Victorian houses left standing downtown.

Day 3 in Calgary

The Olympic hill on the way out

Canada Olympic Park sits on the western edge of the city on the road to Banff, which makes it the obvious last stop whether you are heading for the mountains or looping back to the airport. The ski jumps from the 1988 Winter Olympics are still standing on the hill and are visible from the highway for miles, and the site now runs as a year-round sports park: mountain biking and a summer bobsleigh in the warm months, skiing and tubing in the cold ones.

You can go up the jump tower for the view back over the city and the foothills, and the museum at the base covers both the 1988 games and Canadian sport more broadly. An hour and a half is enough unless you are booking an activity, in which case allow a morning.

From here the airport is thirty minutes northeast and Banff is an hour and a quarter west.

  1. 09:30

    WinSport

    Leisure

    Fifteen minutes from downtown by car, longer by bus. Check the seasonal schedule, because what is running here changes completely between summer and winter.

With more time: If sport is not the draw, the Calgary Zoo is closer to downtown and has a Prehistoric Park full of full-size dinosaurs, which makes sense in a province that has produced more of their bones than almost anywhere on earth.

Before you go

Getting in

Calgary International is the main gateway to the Canadian Rockies and has direct flights from across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia. It is twenty minutes northeast of downtown by taxi and about forty-five by the 300 express bus, which costs a few dollars and drops you in the middle of town.

Almost everybody hiring a car for Banff and Jasper picks it up here. If that is you, consider collecting the car on the day you leave the city rather than on arrival: downtown parking is expensive and you will not need it.

Getting around

The CTrain is the light rail and it is free through the downtown core along 7th Avenue, which covers most of the middle of the city without paying anything. Beyond that a day pass is cheap and the buses connect to it.

The other local peculiarity is the plus fifteen network: a system of enclosed bridges fifteen feet above the street linking most downtown buildings, running to some sixteen kilometres and the largest of its kind anywhere. It exists because of the winters, and in January you can cross most of downtown without going outside.

The street grid is quadrant-based, so every address carries NW, NE, SW or SE and getting that wrong sends you a long way. Centre Street and the Bow River are the dividing lines.

Weather, and the chinook

Calgary is high, dry and sunny, with more clear days than anywhere else in the country and cold nights all year. Summer days reach the mid twenties and can hail; snow in June is not unheard of.

In winter the chinook arrives: a warm dry wind coming down off the mountains that can lift the temperature twenty degrees in a few hours and strip the snow off the streets in an afternoon. It comes with a distinctive arch of cloud on the western horizon and, according to half the city, a headache.

The Stampede

Ten days in early July, running since 1912, and it is not a small thing: rodeo, chuckwagon racing, a midway, a great deal of free breakfast pancakes and the entire city in western dress including the bank staff.

If you want it, book accommodation months ahead and expect to pay double. If you do not, avoid those ten days entirely, because the city is full and the prices reflect it.

Calgary rewards low expectations, which is a backhanded compliment it has earned by being described for decades as a place people fly into. It is flat, new, windy and unromantic, and it has a better library, a better river path and better restaurants than any of that suggests.

Then drive west. The mountains start where the prairie stops, and from the last set of traffic lights it is about fifty minutes to the park gate.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Calgary worth stopping in at all?
Two nights, yes. It is a good eating and drinking town with a handful of genuinely strong sights, and arriving jet-lagged and driving straight into the mountains is a worse plan than most people realise.
How far are the Rockies?
Banff is an hour and a quarter west on a fast divided highway, and Lake Louise about two hours. You can see the mountains from the top of the tower on a clear day.
Should I go to the Stampede?
Once, if the dates happen to fit. It is genuinely the biggest thing the city does and the whole town joins in. Just do not arrive expecting a normal week or a normal hotel rate.
What about the badlands and the dinosaurs?
The Royal Tyrrell Museum at Drumheller is an hour and a half northeast and is one of the great palaeontology collections anywhere. It is a long day trip from Calgary and it is worth it.
How cold does it get?
Very, in short bursts, and then a chinook arrives and it is above freezing by lunchtime. January swings between minus thirty and plus twelve in the same week, which nobody warns visitors about.