Calgary / Drumheller - Dinosaur Valley

Another busy week at work, but we did manage to fit in several cool meals at Wild Ginger (we ate there three times), Teatro, Blink, Caesars (a famous steak house), River Café (yes again), Divino, and Silver Dragon in Chinatown (and we found a place that sold Bubble tea!).

Tuesday 16 October 2007
Tonight Yang met his friend Anita who was visiting from KL for dinner at Le Pont de la Tour near Tower Bridge. The food and service were good though nothing to rave about and it didn't help that the restaurant lost their booking. Fortunately Yang had a print out confirmation!

Wednesday 17 October 2007
Tonight Yang and his Pod-mates went bowling at Bloomsbury Lanes near Russell Square. This bowling alley is quite ecclectic as it has old cinema seats on the way downstairs, karaoke rooms and a retro diner as well as the retro bowling lanes. Fortunately none of the poddites were very good at bowling, as Yang certainly isn't! However he came a respectable close second in the end. They followed this with a dinner of burgers and hot dogs at the diner and then drinks, whislt waiting for some attendees who were stuck at work.

Thursday 18 October 2007 - Happy Birthday Linus!
This evening, my colleague and I headed to the Pengrowth Saddledome for our first ever NHL game. I definitely like the pace of ice-hockey better than baseball. The home team is called the Calgary Flames, so whenever they score, the stadium lights up with flames, which we could feel the heat from even from our nosebleed seats. The atmosphere was great as Canadians take the NHL very seriously (the best players are Canadian) so the whole stadium was red with the jerseys of the supporters. Even better, the Flames won, and so the supporters were crazily happy. It was a pretty aggressive game with at least three occasions where 2 players from one team were sent off to the penalty box giving a 5 v 3 advantage to the other team, and of course we got to see two fights, which are allowed to run their course in ice hockey.

In the meantime, Jason kindly invited Yang over for dinner with Linus and Tammy. Linus' birthday dinner was a low key affair consisting of homemade chorizo burgers (thanks Jason!) and some Jacob's Creek wine courtesy of Robin to keep an Aussie theme (though Robin, FYI we don't actually drink the wine we sell to you Poms - just like we don't drink Fosters).

Earlier that evening, Jason had gone to a photography exhibition at Paul Smith in Albemarle Street entitled "Small Planet", which inspired the boys to make their own attempts at "miniature photography", this one is a photograph Yang took in Marseille of a football game.




Friday 19 October 2007
Yang met up with Linus, Tammy, Jason, Peter, Ammy, Robin, Robin's two flatmates, Janet, Richard and Aaron to officially celebrate Linus' birthday at Rodizio Rico in Angel (we went to the Westbourne Grove branch of Rodizio Rico for Jason's birthday previously). Rodizio Rico is a Brazillian restaurant which has an all-you-can-eat salad bar and the waiters come around to your table with meat on large skewers and cut off slices of meat for you. After everyone had overeaten, they then went for drinks at a nearby bar on Upper Street.

Saturday 20 October 2007
This morning, I drove to Drumheller in the Canadian Badlands. Drumheller is known as Dinosaur Valley as it is situated in a valley where several dinosaur fossils (mainly Albertosaurus) were discovered. On the sightseeing route today was:

- Royal Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology, which has the most dinosaur skeletons exhibited in the world. The exhibits were really educational, although a bit of information overload for me

- Little Church, which is a 6 person Church in the middle of a highway










- Horsethief Canyon, one of the best examples of what the Canadian Badlands looks like





- World’s Largest Dinosaur, a kitsch 86 feet tall tyrannosaurus rex that you climb up









- Rosedale Suspension Bridge










- Willow Valley Hoodoos, more sandstone pillars similar to those I saw in the Banff National Park




- Atlas Coal Mine
- Horseshoe Canyon






Then I drove to the Airport and boarded the plane back to London, where I'll be recovering from jet lag for the next 10 days before flying off again.

In the meantime, Yang and Richard went to the last European show of The Police's reunion tour at Wembley Arena. It was a great show and it really seemed like three old friends having a good time on stage. The support act was Fictionplane, a band headed by Sting's son...who let's just say isn't quite his dad...