down to the river and it was lovely, with loads of trees and green spaces. I think we had both missed seeing greenery, the desert is great but it does get a bit monotonous after a while so it was good to see a change in landscape. Calgary seemed a really friendly city and it was good to feel the sun on our faces without the intense heat of Arizona.

The next day was my sisters birthday. Unfortunately I couldn’t phone her due to the dodgy internet connection which made Skype pretty unusable so I sent her a text instead. We had been really spoiled in America with internet and we were both reckoning that our access to internet wouldn’t be as good again. First thing on the agenda was easy to cook food shopping due to the lack of cooking facilities, it was a bit rubbish really. The hostel wasn’t particularly cheap, it was really busy and the actual kitchen was tiny. After shopping we came back to

the hostel for lunch then went for another wander around. The main shopping street was pleasant and after a good bit of window shopping we headed for the Devonian Gardens. Devonian gardens is an like an indoor botanical garden set on the fourth floor of a high rise office block! The gardens were fabulous and we both thought they were a truly wonderful idea. There were loads of picnic areas and we saw lots of office looking people sat having their lunch in totally lush surroundings. Calgary was really cool for things like that, I think because they are used to having some pretty bad weather they have compensated really well with their architecture and not only are there things like these gardens but the whole downtown area of the city has a 15 metre high undercover walkway connecting all of the buildings. This means that when the weather is bad you can wander around without getting freezing cold or wet - how cool is that? After marvelling at the gardens for a while we headed back outside and down to the