YYC

Calgary refers to itself as YYC a lot. It is also ridiculously friendly. I don't know if those two things are related but I'd chatted to more people in the first hour in Calgary than I had in the previous eight days of Out East. It was almost disconcerting, I assumed people were trying to mug me. They weren't, they were being nice.

The city is surprisingly pretty. In my head it was going to be a sprawling mess of a place. Which it is, but they have kept the two rivers undeveloped which means you can always seem to find some green space. Or, given the time of year, some Autumnal gold.

Dirty food since the last entry:
Deep fried gherkins. Dirty. 

As an aside I tried to be respectable and have Alberta-raised Wagyu beef. That's about the best beef in the world, right? They only went and fried that as well, the rotters. Why would you do that? That's like shooting a decent whisky. Which they also do. The rotters.

So the end of the trip, what have I learnt?

That Canadia is not only more expensive than I thought it would be it adds tax to everything so it's more expensive than it says it is.
-How much is this?
-$1.95.
-great, can I have that then?
-that'll be $2.23.

That Canadia loves a Christmas shop. At least one in every town I went to.

I'm confused by tips, taps and traffic lights. All have been explained to me more than once. But let's make this clear, you don't have to wait at a redlight but you can't necessarily go at a green, that right there blows my simple British mind a little bit.

The food is really, really dirty. I ate a cricket taco, and that doesn't make my top 5 filthy feeds. Scrap that: macncheese burger, croburger, maple meatballs, pulled pork fingers - the cricket taco was a contender for the healthiest thing I've eaten in the last two weeks. Hmm spicy crickets.