Trip to Banff: Day 8 (Greek Festival, the Glenbow Museum, and Jazz)

[This is the only blog entry written on the same day as the activities described.]

These pictures go with my activities for the day.

Surprisingly, I'd seen almost everything I wanted to see in Calgary yesterday, so this day started off slowly as I reviewed what events were going on this weekend that I wanted to attend.

After a bit of internal debate between the Greek Festival and the Inglewood street fair, I decided to go to the former. Arriving there at 10:30am, it hadn't really started yet. There were a few (unexciting) booths selling items. I was told I was the first customer to order food. I had a spanakopita (spinach pie in puff pastry) and a baklava, both fairly good. Then, rather than sit around and wait for it to get started, and since the museum was supposed to take a while, I left. The few people I talked to were really surprised I was a tourist; the organizers only expected locals and only thought locals would hear about this festival. (I heard about it through a small poster in my wanderings.)

Glenbow Museum turned out to be a quite respectable museum with a lot of exhibits (though practically a whole floor was closed special exhibits) and took me about three hours to see everything at a very leisurely pace. It has a number of international exhibits like those on Buddhism and West Africa and a number of local Canadian ones such as exhibits on Canadian Indian tribes, ranching, the fur trade, and the growth of the railroad. They also had a neat display on Warriors from all cultures and societies, discussing the different weaponry and tactics and going into depth on the contrast between a professional Warrior class versus citizen soldiers.

After the museum, I still had a few hours to kill before my flight. So many so that I couldn't just take a very long pre-flight meal. So I referred back to my notes about the Calgary Jazz Festival events and found there was one event going on in the mid-afternoon: a Jazz Jam.

The bar it was held in was small but cute and fairly empty. (See the pictures.) Someone asked me if I was a musician soon after I entered. It appeared a majority of the people in the bar were, confirmed by the fact that the performers jamming changed and introduced new people fairly frequently. They were great; I enjoyed them more than any of the three performances last night. And they re-did a song I really like, Cantaloop (originally by US3).

Feeling guilty sitting there, I ordered the bar's drink special ($3.75 CAN Caesar). It was similar to the Marriott's but with a long snap pea instead of celery. I guess this drink is popular in Calgary.

After an hour, I left, intending to grab some good food before my flight. (I felt bad leaving because they were very good and having fun (as was I) and the bar was still somewhat empty. The people I talked to suggested I come back next week; it turns out this was a weekly event that just happened to be co-listed with the festival. Again, there were more people surprised that I didn't live nearby.) I walked to the aforementioned Divino but it was closed. (According to the AAA book it should've been open. But then, most decent restaurants in Alberta seem to close after lunch at 2pm and reopen at 5pm. So I guess it was one of those.) Then I went to the next restaurant on the list: Cilantro. But it too was closed. But by this point it was almost 5pm, and I needed to head to my flight. (And I wasn't actually very hungry; I would've just eaten if given the opportunity to eat good food.)

And now, after returning the rental car and passing through customs (which happens on the Canadian side when flying to the U.S.), I'm sitting in a lounge writing this post.